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CHRIST THE TRUTH 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


NEW YORK + BOSTON -: CHICAGO + DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., Limrrzp 


LONDON * BOMBAY * CALCUTTA 
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lap. 
TORONTO 


CHRISTY DHE Tl RUN¢&H 


PONG SOY, 


BY. 
WILLIAM “TEMPLE 


BISHOP OF MANCHESTER 


Nem York 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1924 


All rights reserved 


CopyricHt, 1924, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Set up and electrotyped. 
Published September, 1924. 


Printed in the United States of America 


TO 
MY WIFE 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/christtruthessayOOtemp 


PREFACE 


THis book is a sequel, or rather a companion, to 
Mens Creatrix, which was published in 1917. The , 
earlier book was mainly philosophical in its aim; this | 
is mainly theological. That is to say, I tried in Mens | 
Creatrix first to set out a philosophic view, without any _ 
deliberate reference to Christian revelation or experi- 
ence, and then to show that the Incarnation in fact 
supplied the one great need of philosophy. But I 
knew that I was moving away from philosophy and 
that Mens Creatrix would be my only serious attempt 
at the statement of a philosophical position in the 
usually accepted sense of the word. I always hoped, 
however, to follow this with a theological book which 
should begin where Mens Creatrix left off and work 
backwards from there. 

The thought in this book follows that course. It 
is written with the Christian revelation full in view 
from the outset. But for purposes of exposition I | 
have found it better to work in from the circumference 
to the heart of the Christian position, and then out 
again. I want to make it clear that this method is 
adopted for purposes of exposition only. I make no 
attempt to outline a philosophic approach to belief in 
God. That was done, as far as I can do it, in the for- 
mer volume. Here I am trying to set out a whole 
view of the world and life as it appears to one mind 
at least from an avowedly Christian standpoint. The 


vill PREFACE 


order employed was adopted because it was necessary 
to fix the meaning of certain terms before the central 
theme could be discussed. It has been my aim to set 
forth a complete outline, but 1t is worth while, perhaps, 
to point out that the greater part of the argument 
is independent of the particular doctrine of Value 
developed at the outset. 

My desire to write a companion volume to Mens 
Creairix was fostered by a suggestion from Bishop 
Gore that I should expand a footnote in that work 
into a treatise. The footnote in question is on page 
360 and runs as follows: 


‘When the human mind tries to conceive the Eter- 
nal and Omniscient God, it always pictures Him as 
knowing all Time at a moment of Time,—as, for ex- 
ample, knowing now all the past and future. But 
the whole point of the argument is that while all 
Time is the object of the Eternal comprehension, the 
comprehending Mind is extra-temporal and _ there- 
fore does not grasp it now or at any other Time, but 
precisely Eternally. Thus we turn the flank of Berg- 
son’s argument that Finalism is ‘only inverted mech- 
anism,’ and that by means of a treatment of Time 
which is based on his own.” 


This footnote was connected in my own mind with 
another, which is on page 318: 


“Tt is to be remembered that we have not the 
World-History without the Incarnation as one expres- 
sion of the Divine Will and the Life of the Incarnate 
as another; for that Life is a part of History, though 


PREFACE ix 


it reveals the principle of the whole, and it is through 
its occurrence in the midst of History that History is 
fashioned into an exposition of the principle there 
revealed. We have here a series which is part of an- 
other series and is yet perfectly representative of it. 
(Cf. the Supplementary Essay in Royce’s The World 
and the Individual.) But here the series which is 
contained (the Life, Death, Resurrection of Christ) 
only becomes representative of the series which con- 
tains it (the entire history of the world) in virtue of the 
influence which by occurring within the latter it is able 
to exercise upon it. Therefore, though Transcend- 
ence and Immanence are fused into one, the Tran- | 
scendent aspect is always dominant.” 


Those two footnotes are a summary of what I have 
tried to set forth here in some detail. 

I am convinced that one reason why comparatively 
few men of the highest ability and education are at 
present offering themselves for ordination is that the 
intellectual atmosphere is dominated by a philosophy’ 
which leaves no room for a specific Incarnation. This 
philosophy is not materialist or atheist; it is both 
spiritual and theistic; but the idea of God which it 
reaches is such as to preclude His ever doing anything 
in particular in any other sense than that in which He 
does everything in general. I believe that a very 
slight touch to the intellectual balance may make the 
scales incline the other way. Part of the trouble is 
that theologians have left the field of most general 
inquiry too largely to non-theological philosophers; 
they have tended to write either history or detailed 


x PREFACE 


discussion of particular doctrines. What is needed 
is the exposition of the Christian idea of God, life 
and the world, or, in other words, a Christo-centric — 
metaphysics. "a | 

The building of such a scheme of thought out of 
the over-abundant intellectual material available in 
our generation must be the work of many minds, 
not of one—especially if that one is primarily occupied 
with administration, policy, and practical movements. 
My contribution must be a small one; I hope it may 
lead, even by the process of its own refutation if need 
be, to more substantial contributions from better 
qualified minds. 

Most of my reading and a great part of my writing 
for three years past has been planned with a view to 
this volume. The first draft of Chapter I. was written 
as a paper to be read at a meeting of the British Philo- 
sophical Societies in Manchester in the summer of 
1922, and afterwards appeared in Mind, N. S. 124. 
Chapter VII. and most of Chapter XIV. were first 
written as lectures delivered in Manchester Cathedral, 
and the former was published with others of the same 
series by Messrs. Palmer & Sons under the title Funda- 
mentals of the Faith. Part of Chapter III. appeared 
in The Pilgrim for April 1921. To all who are con- 
cerned I offer my thanks for permission to republish. 

My thanks are also due in a special degree to Mrs. 
Duff, whose delightful hospitality in the Isle of Wight 
during successive summer holidays provided the 
peace of mind and body without which the book 
could never have been either planned or written; to 
the Rev. L. W. Grensted, who has read the whole in 


”= 


PREFACE xi 


typescript and made many valuable suggestions; to 
Canon Raven for searching comments on the first 
draft of Chapter VIII.; and to Canon Quick, who has 
read the proofs, and to whom I owe many improve- 
ments both in the argument itself and in its expression. 
W. MANCHESTER. 


BISHOPSCOURT, 
MANCHESTER, 
June 1924. 


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CONTENTS 


PART I 
OUTER CIRCLE 


PAGE 
CHAPTER I 
LAE OLRUCTURE OF) IRBATATY Oe Weel. st. Sepang ass 3 
CHAPTER II 
Tue APPREHENSION OF VALUE. ..........00ccceeeeeeee 27 
CHAPTER III 
IRELIGIOUS ECXPERIENCH 8 Pus Pero ee ec cla bletele weet 42 
PART II 
INNER CIRCLE 
CHAPTER IV 
ABE NATURE OF MAND Dope ti a OLGA e os oS 59 
CHAPTER’ V 


xiv CONTENTS 


PAGE 
CHAPTER VI 
THE SNATURE. OF GFOD 20 05.0 24. ition othe eis hl elves errs IIO 
PART III 
THE CORE OF THE ARGUMENT 
CHAPTER VII 
HE GODHEAD OF JESUSI(CHRIST coca a eee Oe ete 125 
CHAPTER VIII 
(LHECERSON, OF CHRIST. On). Sa ane nuptial sea some 147 
CHAPTER IX 
THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH............eeecees 184 
PART IV 


INNER CIRCLE 


CHAPTER X 
GOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION............... 207 


CONTENTS XV 


PAGE 
CHAPTER XI 
ROTERNITYTAND ELISTORY eres Baa hs see lc elite ne nat onions 223 
CHAPTER XII 
MAN IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION............05. 253 
PART V 
OUTER CIRCLE 
CHAPTER XIII 
IWORSHIP’AND SACRAMENTS «0072s ape auteis fis tie ore we ore ones 273 
CHAPTER XIV 
SPEER ATONE MENT ef yan son fetes aioe eee wile aon Maree 302 


CHAPTER XV 
LOVE DIVINE: THE BLESSED TRINITY... . 1.0.0. csceoes 327 


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CHAPTER I 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 


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“The world of reality, we may say in a word, is the world of values.” 
—F.H. BRADLEY. 


It is abundantly clear that one of the chief char- 
acteristics of contemporary philosophy is the place 


which it gives to the concept.of Value. There is noth-— of 


ing unprecedented in this. Indeed it is not possible to 
give a higher place to Value than Plato did when he 
made the Good the supreme principle in Reality, or 
required of Anaxagoras that, in order to illustrate 
the supremacy of Reason, he should prove the earth 
to be either round or flat by showing which it is better 
that it should be. Aristotle, whom no one has yet 
censured for sentimentalism, similarly clinches his 
argument for the Unity of God or the governing 
principle with the maxim and the quotation: ra 6é 
dvra ov BotXerar modtTevecOat, KaKOs. “otk dyabdv 
ToAvuKotpavin’ ets Kolpavos éoTw.”? But though not un- 
precedented, the prominence of Value in the thought 
of our time is characteristic. To the religious thinker, 


1 Metaphysics, A ad fin. 


4 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


it is welcome. And yet there is a remarkable indefi- 
niteness in the current use of the term, and the re- 
lation of Value to Reality or Substance is by most 
writers either not discussed or is very sketchily out- 
lined. 

The structure of Reality, as it presents itself to us, 
seems to be as follows: It consists of many grades, 
of which each presupposes those lower than itself, 
and of which each finds its own completion or perfect 
development only in so far as it is possessed or in- 
dwelt by that which is above it. This seems to involve 
an infinite regress, and suggests an infinite progress. 
Whether there is in fact a lowest and a highest term 
in this scale of finite existences I do not know, and I 
do not greatly care. In a former book! I have tried 
to show that the infinite series is not necessarily 
meaningless in logic or futile in ethics. At present 
I am not concerned with the problem of lowest and 
highest terms, but with the facts before us, which may 
fall midway between such terms. Moreover, I am 
rather tabulating impressions than constructing a 
system, though the tabulation is of interest because 
it suggests the principle of a system. To make my 
present meaning clear it will be enough to take the 
broad divisions: Matter, Life, Mind, Spirit. These 
grades may be for our present purpose indifferently 
regarded as various entities or as different modes of 
action and reaction. Matter is itself a term covering 
many grades; so is Life. But each has sufficient 
identity in itself and sufficient distinctness from the 
others for the requirements of the argument. 


1 Mens Creatrix (Macmillan, 1917). 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 5 


The term Matter is here taken to cover the sub- 
stances, or the modes of action and reaction, which 
are studied in the sciences of Physics and Chemistry. 
It is at once quite clear that those sciences give no 
account of the self-movement which is one characteris- 
tic of Life, or of the comprehension of spaces and 
times which is one characteristic of Mind. The lower 
cannot explain the higher. But that is not all. The 
living organism has in its material constitution a unity 
of differences, a subtlety of codrdination, a spon- 
taneity of adaptation, that no knowledge of Physics 
and Chemistry would enable the observer to antic- 
ipate. The material only reveals its full potentialities 
when Life possesses and indwells it. The later devel- 
opment reveals what had all along been potential in 
the earlier; but no knowledge of the earlier apart from 
that development would have made possible a predic- 
tion of the development. Matter only reveals what 
it really is when Life supervenes upon it. 

Similarly Life only reveals what it really is when 
Mind supervenes upon it. No study of zodlogy and 
biology will enable the student to predict the occur- 
rence among living things of the mathematician or the 
financier. The use of faculties, which at first are 
used for mere survival, in the interest of ends that 
have nothing at all to do with survival, must occur 
in fact before it can be anticipated in theory. So, 
too, Mind as intellect only shows what it can be and 
do when it is guided by Mind as Spirit. I should find 
the differentia of Spirit in the sense of Absolute Value 
and therefore of obligation; this, at its height, is Love 
or personal union. Because Spirit is, or has, the sense 


6 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


of absolute value it also is, or has, the capacity for 
fellowship with God. The claim made upon Life by 
Art and Science cannot be accounted for in terms of 
calculation; still less can the self-sacrifice of the hero 
or the martyr. And, if Religion is to be trusted, even 
Spirit (as known in our experience) only reveals what 
it can be and do when it is possessed by that Highest 
Being, whom we call Spirit because Spirit is the highest 
grade of Reality known to us. 

It is to be admitted, and indeed emphasized, that 
these “‘grades”’ taken singly are abstractions. Reality 
is a continuous whole within which the mind of each 
individual finds itself. The mind draws for itself the 
distinctions which it makes in this continuous whole— 
the distinction of Self and Not-self being one of the 
most fundamental. To treat either the Self or the 
Not-self in isolation, or to speak of any of the dis- 
tinguishable elements in Reality without reference to 
their setting, is to ignore some part of the truth con- 
cerning them, and will become a falsification unless 
we remember what we are doing. But abstraction 
is an inevitable phase of thought, and we need not 
shrink from it. Also we have to remember that 
Reality is either supra-temporal and supra-spatial, or 
else is continuous in time as truly as it is continuous 
in space. Consequently, in whatever sense we may 
consider the Past in abstraction from the Present and 
Future, in just that same sense we may consider Mat- 
ter in abstraction from Life. Geology may legit- 
imately aspire to the apprehension of truth concern- 
ing the world as it was before Life appeared. 

We begin, then, with the conception of Reality as 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 7 


existing in many grades, each of which finds its own 
completion or perfect development only in so far as 
it is possessed or indwelt by that which is above it. 
But we then notice that each depends for its actuality 
upon those which are below it. Matter itself as 
experienced by us can be reduced to what is simpler 
than itself, whether to a, B, and y particles! or still 
more ultimately to Space-Time.? Life is unknown 
apart from living organisms, which are Matter in- 
formed by Life. Mind is unknown except in reason- 
ing, living organisms. Spirit is unknown except in 
conscientious, reasoning, living organisms. Whether 
the higher grades can exist apart, there seems to be no 
means of deciding; in our experience they never do. 

Thus we see each grade dependent for its existence 
on the grades below, and dependent for its own full 
actualization on the grade or grades above. Such 
seems, apart from any theory of its origin or raison 
d’étre, to be in fact the structure of Reality. 

Now, if we ask for an explanation of the Universe 
as a whole we are bound to formulate the answer in 
terms of Will. This is a dogmatic statement of a 
controversial position; its justification will be more 
apparent as we proceed. Here I would only submit 
that there is in our experience one, and only one, 
self-explanatory principle—namely, Purpose or Will. 
No doubt, if any one can believe in a purpose with no 
will behind it, we should have to say ‘‘Purpose”’ 
only, leaving “Will” as a precarious inference; but 


1 Or “emanations,” if ‘‘particles” be regarded as an incorrect term. 
2J must not be understood to accept this modern amalgam as 
really the ultimate constituent of the material universe. 


8 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


as it appears that Purpose and Will are terms that 
mutually imply each other, we may speak of either 
indifferently. There is a “‘problem of evil,” but 
there is not in the same sense any problem of good. 
When we find as the cause of any phenomenon an 
intelligent will which chose to cause that phenomenon 
to occur, we raise no further questions, unless we fail 
to see how that will came to seek this occurrence as 
good. We may be puzzled by the way a man exer- 
cises choice; but our problem here is not, as a rule, 
a problem of efficient causation. When we sym- 
pathize, we are not puzzled. If I say of any one “I 
cannot understand acting like that,’ I do not mean 
that I cannot give a psychological analysis of the 
motives of the action; I mean that I cannot imagine 
myself doing it. When in the causal regress we 
arrive at a will, the regress is at an end, and to under- 
stand means, not to give a causal explanation, but to 
sympathize. We have reached an ultimate term. 
And when we do sympathize, our mind raises no more 
questions. The only explanation of the Universe 
that would really explain it, in the sense of providing 
to the question why it exists an answer that raises no 
further question, would be the demonstration that it 
is the creation of a Will which in the creative act 
seeks an intelligible good. But that is Theism. 
Theism of some kind is the only theory of the universe 
which could really explain it. Theism may be un- 
tenable; if it is, the universe is ultimately inexplicable. 
Merely to show how it fits together as a rational 
system does not fully explain it, for we are left still 
asking—why does it exist at all? When once that 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 9 


question is asked the answer must be found in Theism 
or nowhere. 

I need hardly say that I do not advance this outline 
argument either as the only defence of Theism or as 
a sufficient intellectual basis for it. The whole body 
of argument that is articulated by Professor Pringle- 
Pattison and Professor Sorley in their Gifford Lectures, 
or by Dr. Matthews in his Boyle Lectures, is here 
presupposed.! But the point which I have just 
mentioned, and which deserves more attention in my 
judgment than it generally receives, is the one most 
germane to the group of considerations with which 
we are now specially concerned. Other arguments 
seem to establish the principle that the universe must 
be interpreted by spiritual rather than by mechanical 
or other materialistic categories. Other arguments 
tend to establish the ethical character of the spiritual 
power or powers that govern the world. Philosoph- 
ically everything is ready for Theism. But actual 
belief in a living God rests primarily, as I think, on 
religious experience, and finds its intellectual support 
in the reflection that this belief is capable in principle 
of supplying an explanation of the very existence of 
the Universe, which no other hypothesis available to 
us affords any hope of doing. That is no proof. It 
cannot be laid down as an axiom that there must be 
some explanation of the existence of the Universe. 
If the existing scheme of things be internally coherent, 


1 Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God; Sorley, Moral Values and the 
Idea of God; Matthews, Studies in Christian Philosophy. I have 
attempted to state my own philosophical approach to Theism in 
Mens Creatrix; in the present essay Theism is assumed. 


IO CHRIST THE TRUTH 


it cannot be said that the intellect imperiously demands 
more than this for its satisfaction.! It is true that we 
have to choose between postulating a rational universe 
and accepting complete skepticism. It is not true 
that we have to choose between theism and skepticism. 
I should be very sorry to have to believe that Reality 
is what Mr. Bradley describes or even what Professor 
Pringle-Pattison describes. But I could not reject 
their accounts of it only on the ground that they do 
not explain its existence as a whole. For while it is 
an additional advantage in any theory if it can do this, 
it is not fatal to any theory that it should fail to do 
this, or even refuse to attempt it. It may be that 
there is no explanation of Reality itself, and that it is 
not self-explanatory except in the sense that all its 
parts support each other in constituting the whole. 
Or, again, it may be that there is an explanation of 
Reality, but that it is something wholly inaccessible 
to the mind of man. There seems no reason to sup- 
pose that mind, in its human manifestation, either 
includes, or itself is, the last term in cosmic evolution, 
and if there is more to follow, then, though human 
mind would comprehend the lower forms, it would 
not know at all what constituted the higher forms, 
and it would be in these, not in human mind, that the 
explanation of Reality might be found. 

None the less, if there is an available hypothesis 


1 Such a Universe would not be valueless; it would have intellectual 
value, but no moral value; and if Reason manifests itself (as I should 
maintain) in the apprehension of ultimate value whereby all other 
values are either found or brought to cohere with one another and 
with existence, then such a Universe would not be rational. (I owe 
this point to Canon Quick.) 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY II 


which is capable in its own nature of supplying the 
explanation of Reality, it is thoroughly scientific to 
experiment with it and see if it can make good its claim. 
Now, Purpose, as the expression of a Will, is such a 
principle. But to seek the explanation of the Uni- 
verse in a Purpose grounded in a Will is Theism; it 
is the acceptance, provisionally at least, of the doctrine 
of God as Creator. From religion there comes abun- 
dant support for this doctrine. To some religions, 
and notably to the Jewish and Christian religions, it 
is essential and fundamental. 

Now, if we assume the structure of Reality to be 
such as I have outlined, and if we accept (at least for 
purposes of inquiry) the explanation of it which 
Theism offers, certain consequences follow, which it 
is our main purpose at present to trace out. 

Will acts always for the sake of value, or good, to 
be created or enjoyed as a result of the action. It is 
precisely as so acting that it is self-explanatory and 
intrinsically intelligible. ‘This would lead us to ex- 
pect that whatever Will creates is either itself good 
or is a means to good. Moreover, if what is created 
is good not (or not only) as a means but in itself, 
this means that its very being or substance is good. 
I do not go so far as to say that good is the being or 
substance of all that exists, but we are entitled and 
even bound by the hypothesis adopted to say that 
whatever exists must either be a means to something 
which is substantially good or else be itself substan- 
tially good. We seem therefore to be led up to a new 
inquiry into the relations of value and reality. 

Now, if I may take Professor Pringle-Pattison as 


12 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


an illustrious example of contemporary philosophy, 
and discuss, not the details of his argument, nor its 
claims taken as a whole, but the general impression 
created by it on my own mind, and also (as I find) on 
many other minds, I would venture to suggest that 
many of the anxieties with regard to it which that gen- 
eral impression arouses would vanish if he saw his way 
to a more thoroughgoing conception of God in terms 
of Will. For the general impression left on my mind 
by his great book on the [dea of God, and strengthened 
by his essay in the volume entitled The Spirit, is that 
he accepts the Universe as somehow existing, and then 
finds that it reveals values, which are regarded all the 
while as being adjectival to it. That they appear at 
all is a determinant consideration for the philosopher, 
and yet they appear rather as appendices of an other- 
wise existing universe than as themselves its con- 
stitutive elements; and when we reach the Being in 
whom all values are realized, He hovers uncertainly 
between two positions, being at one time the Ground 
of all existence and at another a characteristic of a 
universe which would apparently continue to exist 
(though shorn of its values) if He were to cease. And 
it is the latter position to which He seems to be ulti- 
mately relegated. I have no doubt that this summary 
is unjust to Professor Pringle-Pattison. Almost 
any summary of a theory elaborated with so delicate 
a balance and an argument so closely knit would 
be unjust. But at the end of The Idea of God I was 
left with a sense that this book makes God ad- 
jectival to the Universe, and the essay in The Spirit 
removed all doubt on the question. And yet I was 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 13 


sure that in the main the Professor was dealing with 
the matter on right lines and had rendered a great 
service to philosophy, and especially the philosophy of 
religion, by following the method which he had chosen. 

The question with which I am now concerned is 
this: should we conceive of things as existing inde- 
pendently, and possessing value as an attribute? or 
should we think of value as itself the true reality which 
realizes its various forms through embodying itself 
in things—or through the creation of things for this 
purpose by the Divine Will? 

Now, I believe that our difficulty arises from the 
fact that Philosophy being an intellectual activity, 
always tends to depend more upon that search for an 
ultimate value which is conducted in science than upon 
the two kindred efforts of ethics and of art. In sci- 
ence the intellect is not only supreme but sole; it is 
natural for the intellect to take the methods and op- 
erations of science not only as its method but also 
as determining the subject-matter of its Inquiry. 
That I take to be the essential feature of the heresy of 
intellectualism. Philosophy must be intellectual or 
it ceases to be itself. But the intellect always gets its 
subject-matter from outside itself; it is ready enough 
to accept it from the physical world, and from its own 
procedure and results in dealing with the physical 
world. Itis less ready to accept as the material of its, 
operations the procedure and results of human activi- 


1T should add that in an article in Mind (N.S. 109) the Professor 
shows that he does not actually regard God as adjectival to the Uni- 
verse, and does not desire his argument to suggest such a conclusion. 
But if it does suggest it, that only makes it clearer than ever that the 
foundations of the argument are incomplete. 


14 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


ties which are either not purely or not at all intellec- 
tual. Yet for a satisfactory metaphysic it must in- 
clude these, and indeed (as I think) must give them a 
determining influence. The goal of Science is on the 
objective side Reality, on the subjective side Knowl- 
edge: the goal of Art is on the objective side Beauty, on 
the subjective side Creation and Appreciation; the 
goal of Ethics is on the objective side Society, on the 
subjective side enlightened Conscience and dutiful 
Action. No doubt both Art and Ethics presuppose 
Science or Knowledge, and the spirit of Beauty and of 
Mortality is the same as the spirit of Truth. ‘Love is 
the mainspring of Logic.” ! But while Art and Ethics 
include the intellectual element, they contain also 
emotional and volitional elements, which Science omits 
with the single exception of the will to know. But 
these processes, while containing elements not intel- 
lectual in origin, are susceptible of intellectual treat- 
ment. Our plea is not that philosophy should cease 
to be intellectual, but that the material of its intellec- 
tual inquiry should be drawn as much from Ethics and 
Art as from Logic or Epistemology. It is apparent 
that whereas Science ends in Knowledge, which leaves 
the objective world as it finds it, Art and Ethics aim 
both at a comprehension of the object and at action 
which modifies the object. Now, if the intellect is 
led by its own process to the affirmation, or at 
least to the supposition, that the explanation of 
the Universe is to be found in the activity of a Crea- 
tive Will, it must go on to accept those human ac- 
tivities which include some creative energy as surer 


1 Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 341. 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 15 


guides to the constitution of Reality than its own 
special activity of science, which leaves its object as it 
finds it. 

Starting with the general outlook appropriate to 
science, philosophers have generally made Existence 
their substantive notion, while Value has become 
adjectival. It is quite true that Plato spoke of the 
Idea of Good as éréxerva tis ovotas—which the con- 
text proves to mean ‘‘above and beyond objective 
being.” (Republic, vi. 509 B); but he does not follow 
this up by including ethics and politics in his pro- 
peedeutic studies; he remains under the predominant 
influence of geometry. Having apprehended the 
Ideas of Good, the philosopher is to return to practical 
affairs and rule his city in the light of this supreme 
principle. But the study of Ethics and Politics is not 
called in to help in the apprehension of the Good. So 
St. Thomas Aquinas is quite thorough in the delib- 
erate and reiterated identification of Good with Be- 
ing—‘‘Bonum et ens sunt idem secundum rem: sed 
differunt secundum rationem tantum” (Sum. Theol. 
Pt. I., Q. v., A. 1)—yet he goes on to treat Being 
as prior because it is the first object of the intellect, and 
thereafter the whole concept of Value almost disap- 
pears. Consequently his definition of Substance as 
that which exists of itseli—‘‘substantiae nomen .. . 
significat essentiam cui competit sic esse, id est per se 
esse” (Sum. Theol. Pt. I., Q. iii., A. 5)—never leads 
him even to consider whether this is not the same as to 
say that Substance and Good (or Value) are synony- 
mous terms.! 


1 Hence the chief difficulties of his sacramental theories. 


16 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


But the identity of substance (so defined) with 
Value follows inevitably from a thoroughgoing accept- 
ance of the Theistic hypothesis. The Universe is to 
be conceived as deriving its origin and unity from a 
Creative Will. But the correlative of Will is Good 
or Value; therefore the most fundamental element 
in things is their Value. This is not a property which 
they have incidentally; it is the constitutive principle, 
the true self, of every existent. Aquinas says that a 
thing is perfect in so far as it exists: “In tantum est 
autem perfectum unumquodque in quantum est in 
actu”? (Sum Theol. Pt. I., Q. v., A. 1.)—and that 
everything is good so far as it exists: ‘‘Omne ens, in 
quantum est ens, est bonum” (Sum Theol. Pt. I., 
Q. v., A. 3). 

The inversion of this is the fertile truth; every- 
thing exists so far as it is good.” The ultimate Reality 
and the primary ground of existence for all else is the 
Creative God, in whom all value is eternally real. 
Value, being the immediate object of the Creative 
Will, is itself the secondary ground of existence for 
all created things. Value is thus, in the order of be- 
ing, prior to existence. But Value is not existence, 
and must receive (or come into) existence in order to 


ECT De, 343 

2 Hocking argues strongly and (I think) convincingly that “the 
value of any object of attention is nothing other than the entering 
of the reality-idea into the thought of the object,” so that “the use 
of the God-idea . . . will be the chief determinant of the value level 
in any consciousness” (The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 
pp. 130 and 136). Edward Caird used to urge his pupils to avoid the 
common phrase ‘“‘too good to be true.” “If anything is not true,” 
he would say, “it is because it is not good enough to be true.” 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 17 


be a part of Reality; on the other hand nothing is 
brought into existence except as a means to, or as a 
vehicle of, Value. 

This view of Value as prior to Existence and as 
the ground of existence is not easy to express in terms 
adapted to the opposite conception. It is not indeed 
a novel view, for, as has been said, it dominates the 
thought of Plato. But language has not been fash- 
ioned to accord with it, and even those thinkers who 
have wished to give a primary place to Value have 
often failed to escape the entangling suggestions of the 
language which they had to use. This Ritschlianism 
is (on our view) right in so far as it contends that 
all religious doctrines are Value-judgments, but 
is wrong, and even hopelessly wrong, in so far as it 
regards these as other than metaphysical and ontologi- 
cal judgments. Perhaps we may help ourselves to 
avoid a similar entanglement by considering some 
senses of the term ‘‘Substance,” already referred to, 
which on our view it is specially important to dis- 
tinguish. 

If it were possible to ignore all former use, I should 
urge that Substance be used for Real Thing;! in 
that case Substance=Value+Existence. But we 
cannot ignore the fact that according to one familiar 


1So Bishop Gore writes: ‘Let us proclaim to all the winds of 
heaven that by ‘substance’ the Church means no more and no less 
than ‘real thing,’ so that when we speak of the Son and of the Spirit 
as ‘of one substance’ with the Father, we mean that they belong to 
that one real being which we call God; and when we speak of Christ 
as ‘of one substance’ with us, we mean that He took the real being 
of man, and is that real thing, in all respects that a man is” (The 
Holy Spirit and the Church, pp. 233, 234). 


18 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


use of the word, the Substance of a thing is something 
other than the whole real thing, being distinguished 
from some elements in the whole real thing, as, for 
example, from the Accidents. Now I submit that if 
the word is used on this way at all, Substance is and 
can be nothing but Value. Value is the element in 
real things which both causes them to be, and makes 
them what they are, and is thus fitly called Sub- 
stance, in so far as this is other or less than their to- 
tality. But in this sense Substance is to be dis- 
tinguished from actuality. Eternally all Values are 
realized in God; but in the process of time not all 
Values are actual here and now. 

It is certainly true that Value is only actual in the 
various things that are valuable; and it is only fully 
actual (though the discussion of this point belongs to 
a later stage of the argument) so far as it is appreciated 
by some conscious being. It is tempting to separate 
the Good from the good thing, and to demand either 
some account of it in such separation or else a method 
of apprehending it in separation. But to do this is 
to repeat the mistake made by the Hedonists in Ethics. 
When I am hungry, I want food and not (except 
incidentally) the pleasure of eating. Desire is not of 
some one general thing, such as pleasure. And yet it 
is true that when Iam hungry what I want is the value 
or the good of food; but this is not separable from 
the food, and is not even properly distinguishable 
from it, though it is distinguishable from other as- 
pects of any particular food which are irrelevant 
to my hunger. 

So Will aims at Good in all its forms: and as God 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 19 


makes the world, He beholds it as very good. There 
is the problem of Evil, of course, and it may be that 
it will wreck this whole fashion of philosophy; but 
we cannot embark upon the discussion of it here.! 
Our concern just now is with the method which philos- 
ophy must pursue if it adopts this principle that only 
Value has substantial being. 

It is clear at once that Ethics and Politics and 
fésthetics will be exalted alongside of Mathemat- 
ics, aS the typical activities of Mind, and that 
on the whole they will be the more normative for 
Metaphysic. The Universe will be approached less 
as a problem (or theorem) in Geometry, more as a 
Drama or Symphony, and as a Society in process of 
formation. 

Now if the structure of Reality is such as we de- 
scribed, and if the problem of Metaphysics is to be 
approached along the lines now indicated, we begin 
to see a great unification take place. The lower 
grades, we said, only attain to the fullness of their own 
being so far as they are indwelt and dominated by 
those above them. They. exist then, ultimately, to 
embody or symbolize what is more than themselves. 
The universe is sacramental. Everything except the 
Creative Will exists to be the expression of that Will, 
the actualization of its values, and the communication 
of those values to spirits created for the special value 
actualized through fellowship in creation and apprecia- 
tion of values. Men can do some of this work them- 
selves. Speech is a manipulation of sounds for just 
such communication and fellowship. By this doctrine 


1T made an attempt to deal with it in Mens Creatrix. 


20 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


the reality of the objects in the world is not divorced 
from our sense of their significance. A friend gave 
me during the war an illustration to show how familiar 
a fact is the transvaluation, which on this theory is 
the only true transubstantiation: Suppose a man 
comes to see me, finds some strips of colored calico 
on the floor, and amuses himself by dancing on them 
to show his contempt for what he takes to be my 
interests; I may think him a tiresome fellow, but 
that will be all: now suppose those bits of calico have 
been sewn together to make my national flag, and he 
dances contemptuously on it; I shall kick him out of 
the house. 

That is comparatively a trifling instance. In any 
case the symbolism of a flag is purely conventional. 
Yet even here it seems absurd to say that the reality 
of the flag is the same as the reality of the strips of 
calico. The accidents (as the schoolmen would say) 
are the same; the substance is changed. 

Beginning with such a conventional symbol we 
may go on to fuller symbolism such as that of great 
Art. Here the principle emerges that to be a true 
or (as I have named it elsewhere) an essential symbol, 
a thing must be itself an individual instance of that 
it symbolizes. So Macbeth can symbolize ambition 
because he is a very individual ambitious man. In 
great art, at least, the symbol is unique, and there is 
no other way of saying what the artist has said. In 
Emerson’s great phrase ‘‘The word is one with that 
it tells of.” If after reading King Lear or hearing 
the Fifth Symphony a man asks what either means, 
we can only tell him that each means itself; but that 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 21 


is the extreme opposite of saying that either is mean- 
ingless.? 

In that highest sphere of creative art which we call 
human conduct, the good or value sought is that of 
Personality (or Character) in Fellowship, with all the 
varieties that this implies. Actions have their value 
as symbolizing and as producing this. 

Of course symbolism and value involve a subjective 
element. For symbolism this may be a limitation, 
for the subjective element is specially concerned with 
interpretation, and if the symbol is to be really ex- 
pressive, or, in other words, if it is to be a real symbol, 
it must be such as can be understood by those minds 
for whom it is created. But into value the subjective 
element enters not asa limitation, but asa constituent. 
Value exists in order to be appreciated; and though 
the appreciating mind finds rather than creates the 
value, yet the value is dormant or potential until 
appreciation awakes it to energy and actuality.” 


1 For a full discussion of the symbolism of Art, I must refer to the 
chapter on “‘The Nature and Significance of Art” in Mens Creatrix. 
This is one of the points where language becomes a source of great 
difficulty. A symbol is (properly) something which means or signifies 
. something else. But the perfect symbol zs (in a focal manifestation) 
what is symbolizes. Thus words are sounds in the air or marks on 
paper; they symbolize a meaning which is not on paper or in the air. 
But a poem can itself be the very embodiment and vehicle of a value 
which is found zm (not only on occasion of) the apprehension of the 
words. See further Chapter XIII. 

2 Value is found by the appreciating mind, not imported into the 
valuable object. Yet the object is actually valuable, in the sense of 
contributing to the sum of good, only when it is appreciated. Dr. 
G. E. Moore holds it “better” that a beautiful world should exist 
than an ugly one, even if no one ever appreciated it (Principia 


22 CHRIST) THE’ TRUTH 


Value, in short, is actual in experience. And it is one 
of the advantages of a philosophy which makes Value 
its central principle that it thus in its central principle 
holds objective and subjective together. If a philos- 
ophy can be constructed on this basis at all, it will 
at least be free from the divisive claims of the objective 
and the subjective. Whatever may be true of knowl- 
edge and fact, there is no doubt that in actualized 
Value subject and object are united on equal terms. 

Moreover, it brings them together at the point 
where they ought to meet. For it is in man that the 
first manifestation is found both of conscious apprecia- 
tion of value and of clear distinction between subject 
and object. ‘The division beteen subject and object 
is therefore, on this view, bridged in the very moment 
of its appearance. As we rise to the grade or level 
of Mind, where appreciation first becomes possible, 
that is, of Man (though animals show the beginnings 
both of thought and of appreciation), the problem and 
its solution appear together. For, if our whole theory 
is sound, value determines existence, but value is 
only actual when it is appreciated; therefore Man’s 
appreciation of the world is the first installment, so to 
speak, within the Time process, of the realization of 
that for which the world was made, though in the 
eternal Mind which comprehends all Time this is 
actual eternally. It 1s Man who first rises to the 
question why is there a world at all. It is in Man’s 


Ethica, p. 84). I can attach no meaning to this. But if value is not 
purely objective, no more is it purely subjective. It arises in a sub- 
ject-object system when subject and object are perfectly co-related 
to each other. 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY a2 


appreciation of its value that the answer begins to 
appear; for the solution of the problem of existence 
is found in the experience of what is good. Thus 
the whole universe is created to reflect the manifold 
goodness of the Creator, and to produce within itself 
beings who may share with the Creator His joys in the 
goodness of the created thing. Symbolism is thus 
the supreme philosophic principle. The universe 
exists to reveal the goodness of God so far as it evolves 
intelligences capable of receiving the revelation. 

It is clear that as we advance from the purely con- 
ventional symbolism, represented by the flag, to the 
essential symbol of great art or of ethical conduct, 
the subjective element is reduced in Importance, at 
least so far as it is variable. The Union Jack has 
value only for those who are familiar with a particular 
convention; and to those who do know this it may 
have very different values—for Lord Carson and Mr. 
de Valera, for example. Yet even here the value is 
constitutive in so far as the flag is only made for the 
sake of the value. But in the symbolism of Art and 
Conduct there is no such variability. Men may still 
react in varying degrees of intensity to the different 
embodiments of value, some are more stirred by 
color; some more by line; some are more stirred 
by heroic energy, some more by patient humility. 
But at this level there is no doubt what is the value 
expressed in the work of art or the moral action. 

Tf we start with this principle of symbolism as our 
basis, we shall not, I think, be led to any system very 
different in the greater part of its structure from such 
as is set out, for example, by Professor Pringle-Pattison. 


24 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


The difference will be mainly one of emphasis and of 
detailed expression; but the difference of this kind 
will be all-pervasive. In ways innumerable the state- 
ment will be (as I think) more luminous in detail, 
more sympathetic. ‘There will be more understanding 
of the different phases of Reality from the inside. For 
it is the characteristic of esthetic and moral appreci- 
ation that in them we become absorbed in the object 
itself, as a single whole, and understand it by letting 
it take possession of us, whereas in science we under- 
stand partly by setting the object in an ever widening 
context and learning what forces mold it from with- 
out, and partly by breaking it up analytically into 
its own constituent elements. Of course our method 
will not dispense with the processes and results of 
science; but it will depend quite equally, or rather 
more, on those of art and morality. We shall not 
dispense with the psychologist or sociologist; but we 
shall expect to learn still more’ of philosophic value 
from the dramatist and the statesman. We shall 
still seek rational coherence, but shall interpret it 
more as realized in the Czvitas Dez than as represented 
by the solution of logical contradiction.? 

We said earlier that contemporary philosophy 
manifests a high degree of tension between Value and 
Existence. Perhaps no writer has expressed this with 
so great vehemence as Miguel da Unamuno in The 
Tragedy of Life. It will be among the advantages of 


1 This essay does not profess or attempt to supply, even in outline, 
the system of philosophy here desiderated; it deals with a small part 
of the field—the part which I believe to be of central and pivotal 
importance. 


THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 25 


a Value-philosophy that, if it can make good its posi- 
tion at all, it will remove this tension. But it must 
rest on real values and not on any general theory of 
Value. It is here that the intellectualist tradition has 
most damaged philosophy. Discussions of Good in 
general carry us but a little way. Light comes from 
the study of the actual good things. This involves an 
element of unwelcome dogmatism, for our estimate 
of the various good things cannot claim universal 
acceptance. It is partly for this reason that philos- 
ophers have shrunk from taking their stand firmly 
on certain traditional scales of Value, such, for ex- 
ample, as that of Christianity. But when we find a 
philosopher who does this we are at once aware of a 
greater solidity and richness in his treatment of his 
problem; it is enough to cite in illustration Solovyof’s 
great book The Justification of Good. ‘The philosopher 
who makes value his central principle must take the 
risk of dogmatism and base himself on some selected 
actual values, vindicating his selection as fully as he 
can; he will gain in concrete fullness enough to justify 
the risk. 

Above all he will avoid two difficulties that are 
inherent in the more traditional method of philosophy. 
We shall not try to treat the merely physical as self- 
subsistent, leaving values to attach themselves to it in 
a rather vague manner, while still declaring that the 
explanation of the lower is in the higher; but making 
this declaration, we shall insist that the higher are 
the more nearly self-subsisting, while only the Highest 
is altogether so. And we shall not leave God to hover 
uncertainly between His function as the universal 


26 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


ground of existence and His adjectival attachment to 
the universe as the sum or realization of its values, but 
we shall confidently affirm Him as the sole self-sub- 
sistent Being, existing in absolute independence of 
all else, for whose pleasure and whose creative activity 
all things are and were created. 


CHAPTER II 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 


“ \ NEP XN y x \ YA 4 "A , 
O 57) OLWKEL BEV aTaca Wuxy KQtL TOUTOUV EVEKA j TAaVTa 
, PY s @ * 
TPatTet, ATOMOAVT EVOMEVY) EC €lval,— PLATO. 


It is in Man that the sense of Value seems first to 
become distinct. Other animals have appreciation, 
and even a rudimentary sense of duty. But it seems 
certain that only in Man is there a distinct awareness 
of good and evil as principles, and not only of particu- 
Jar good and evil things. If our whole position is 
sound, then all things exist either for their own value 
or else for the sake of something else that has value. 
Whether that is so or not, certainly human conduct is 
all directed to the attainment of value. Many of men’s 
activities have indeed no value in themselves, but these 
are undertaken for the sake of value which it is hoped 
to realize by means of them. 

The distinction of means and ends in this connection 
must be employed with some caution. It appears to 
suggest that what is classified as ‘‘means”’ is irrelevant 
to the good desired, except as a completely external 
condition. So it sometimes is. Thus a man may 
take up an occupation which he dislikes, and which he 
believes to do no good to any one, in order to make 
money which he may spend either on his pleasure or 
on work which he does believe to benefit mankind. 
Such an occupation is for that man a mere means, 


28 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


having no value in itself, and not affecting the value 
of the end. More commonly, however, there is some 
value inherent in the means; and even when this is 
not so, the value of the end is affected by the process 
of its attainment. It is commonly said that men do 
not value what costs them nothing; and though many 
applications of this principle are rather ludicrous, it 
is a sound principle. It may be true that many people 
enjoy a concert more if they have paid for their seats 
than if they have not; if so, this is only because the 
fact of payment has suggested an expectation of enjoy- 
ment and has thus stimulated sensitiveness. But 
where the cost is not a mere payment as a condition 
of the experience, but an effort or sacrifice directly 
undertaken for the sake of the desired end, it is found 
to affect very intimately the experience in which the 
desired end consists. Perhaps a part of the secret of 
maternal love is to be found here. But the principle 
is certainly true. No one can really see the view from 
a mountain top who has not actually climbed the 
mountain; the man who goes up in a mountain-railway 
may enjoy the view in his own way, but it is a different 
way. 

To this group of considerations we must return 
when we come to discuss the relation of the Time- 
process to our apprehension of Value. At present it 
is enough to make clear the danger of separating means 
and ends in our estimate of the value of ends. The 
means may have no value in itself, and yet may in- 
crease the value of the end which is reached through it. 

It is, of course, in ends alone that value actually 
resides. Many activities or experiences which are 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 29 


chosen as means to others also have value in them- 
selves; but to this extent they become ends. To ask, 
then, what are the various kinds of Value and to ask 
what are the possible ends of life is to ask the same 
question in different words. To that question we now 
turn. 

Value is recognized by a sense of kinship or ‘‘at- 
homeness”’ which we may call satisfaction. Where a 
man claims to find this, his claim cannot be disputed. 
To every man his own sense of value is final. This 
does not involve anarchy or chaos as will become plain 
shortly; even if it did, the fact would stand. 

But though value is recognized by a sense of sat- 
isfaction it does not consist in this satisfaction. Satis- 
faction is an indispensable element in the experi- 
ence of value, but its prominence is very variable, and 
the amount of our nature affected by the satisfaction is 
also very variable. In Pleasure (as ordinarily under- 
stood—that is in isolated moments or periods of satis- 
faction) the subjective element is extremely promi- 
nent, and the area of satisfaction is comparatively 
small; if it is Pleasure pure and simple, the good expe- 
rienced zs the feeling, and the satisfaction is of feeling 
only. No doubt most pleasures are also something 
more than pleasure pure and simple, and all forms of 
value are pleasurable when appreciated. But there 
are some forms of good, deliberately adjudged to be 
good and deliberately chosen, in which the element of 
pleasure is almost nonexistent, while pain is very 
prominent. Of such a good we may say what George 
Eliot’s Romola says of the highest happiness, “‘We 
only know it from pain by its being what we would 


30 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


choose before everything else, because our souls see it 
is good.” 

Pleasures of sense afford the minimum of satis- 
faction though they may occasion the maximum of 
excitement. Very different are the pleasures of Pride. 
Here the subjective element counts for less and the 
objective for more; but the subjective is still con- 
spicuous. ‘The objective element is here dependent 
on a comparison ora contrast. ‘The value in pleasures 
of sense is absolute in the sense that it is wholly in- 
dependent of other experiences; it is made comparative 
by circumstances, when we have to choose between 
such a pleasure and some other end in comparison 
with which the value of the pleasure may be great 
or small. But the value of a bodily pleasure in itself 
is what it is. The value of the pleasures of Pride 
is comparative essentially; or rather, the occasion of 
such pleasure is a comparison. A man enjoys being 
richer than some one else, or cleverer, or better skilled 
in some game or art; or not being one of these he aims 
at it, knowing that to achieve it will bring him pleas- 
ure. Here again, the good or value is the subjective 
state, or feeling; but it is (or may be) the self as a whole 
that is satisfied. Ambition is, as a rule, very largely 
the desire to reach this kind of good. People who, 
when they play games, care very much whether they 
win or lose, show that in their games at least they are 
seeking a comparative value. These values are in 
their influence antisocial, because the success of one 
must involve the failure of others. 

Of the values of Pleasure or Pride it cannot be 
said that they represent the end for which the world 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 31 


was made; nor can it be supposed that the Creator 
finds satisfaction in the attainment of them by His 
creatures. Pleasure indeed may find a subordinate 
place in a perfect life, adding to it a certain flavor; the 
pleasures of Pride may stimulate a sluggish soul to ac- 
tivity, but are really the product of that perverted use 
of self-consciousness which is called the Fall of Man. 
We have not yet reached the type of Value of which we 
could say in the first chapter that it is the real cause of 
the world’s existence. This is Absolute Value, which 
is known to us in the three forms of Truth, Beauty, 
and Goodness (of character).? 

If a man says that he does not see why he should 
want to know the Truth, or to appreciate Beauty, no 
argument can persuade him; if a man says he does not 
see why he ought to be good, no argument can per- 
suade him. ‘“‘Good” and “ought” are correlative 
terms: good is what a man ought to be, and a man’s 
obligation is to be good. And “good” in man includes 
at least some adjustment towards Truth and Beauty. 
Value includes more than the characters of good men, 
so that these other two must be named side by side 
with Good. But they are not three Absolute Values; 
they are three forms of the One Absolute Value, which 
is Love; this uses each of the three as its channel to 
reveal and communicate itself. ‘‘The effort of the 
soul to attain unity with other souls, and supremely 


1T keep the familiar trio of terms, but Truth is here a confusing 
word, as Canon Quick has pointed out to me. ‘Truth is the perfect 
correlation of mind to reality, and is not itself, therefore, apprehended 
as an object in the same way as (e. g.) Beauty. What is really intended 
is that there are three forms of absolute value—intellectual, esthetic, 
and moral, 


ae CHRIST THE TRUTH 


-with God, is the final value or reality possible to that 
soul.” ? 

Truth is the end of the intellect; man does think, 
and he may think right or wrong; to think right is to 
attain truth so far as his thought has gone. Men 
always desire to reach some truth, for their plans will 
break down if they are calculated on a basis of error; 
but this is to desire truth as a means, not as an end. 
To desire truth as an end is to desire the perfect corre- 
lation of the mind to Reality. And this is a good in 
itself, so clearly a good as to impose upon all who 
have understood its nature an obligation to seek it. 
The end is not to acquire masses of information, 
though that may be a means to the end and must be 
included in it, it if is perfectly attained; the end is 
perfect intellectual correlation with Reality. 

The general nature of Beauty I have discussed 
elsewhere and can only give here a dogmatic restate- 
ment of the position there reached.” Beauty is the 
perfect (7. e. truly adequate) expression of the value 
of any truth or fact. Thus it is closely related to 
Truth and has the same logical structure. It appeals, 
as Truth does not, to feeling; and this appeal may be 
so predominant that there is no intellectual element 
traceable at all at first sight. But in fact this element 
is always there in the shape of proportion, or rhythm, 
or grouping, or some other kind of diversity in unity. 
To make Beauty the end of any activity is to seek 
a perfect correlation of feeling with the various values 


1T owe this sentence to my friend the Rev. L. W. Grensted. 
2See the chapter on “The Nature and Significance of Art” in 
Mens Creatrix. 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 33 


of what is apprehended by consciousness. The Value 
may be in the thought rather than in the expression 
as such, as it is In great poetry; but apart from the 
expression there is no beauty—indeed the thought 
only becomes fully actual in the expression. Hence 
Beauty, strictly speaking, concerns what is appre- 
hended by means of the senses, though what is so ap- 
prehended may be far more than sensuous. 

Goodness (of character) is the perfect correlation 
of all the elements of personality into one whole, and 
of that whole with its environment, especially its 
personal environment. ‘This also I have discussed 
at length elsewhere, and must handle again repeatedly 
in later chapters. 

The mere statement of what Truth, Beauty, and 
Goodness are as ends of action is enough to show that 
their Value is both inherent and absolute. It is in- 
herent inasmuch as they are plainly good in them- 
selves, it is absolute inasmuch as it depends on no 
comparison. Also it is social, for its attainment by 
one does not hinder but greatly helps in its attainment 
by others. Self is here a mere receptivity; any em- 
phasis on it or concern about it will assuredly prevent 
a full apprehension of Truth or Beauty or Goodness. 
But this does not mean that the self is merely passive. 
On the contrary, it is intensely active; but its activity 
is mainly receptive, at least in its apprehensions of 
Truth and of Beauty, and its attention is concentrated 


1See Mens Creatrix, Part III. But there I based duty far too ex- 
clusively (as I now think) on social relationships. I should now con- 
tend that obligation is the correlate of value—absolute obligation 
of absolute value. 


34 CHRIST THE .TRUTH 


utterly on the object, not at all on itself. But the 
satisfaction is of the whole self, entire and complete. 

Thus we reach a principle of great practical and 
theoretical importance; the self is capable of complete 
satisfaction in proportion as it is left outside the field 
of its own attention.’ Value exists for subjects; but 
the subject finds the value only when completely 
absorbed in the object. — 

It may seem that although ideal Truth, Beauty, 
and Goodness are absolute values, yet they can never 
be actually experienced as such by us. ‘To some ex- 
tent this is so with Truth, but it is not so with Beauty. 
To see this we have only to consider the methods of 
Science and of Art. Science is discursive and analyt- 
ical. It seeks to understand the object of its study 
either by breaking it up into its component parts and 
showing how these fit together, or by setting it in an 
ever-wider context, asking Why? and of the answer 
asking Why? again. But no limit can be set to either 
of these sical and therefore completeness is never 
reached. If all Reality is one, this means that no 
knowledge of any department can be absolute.” An 


1Tn other words, joy is the fruit of humility. But I use the word 
“joy” in its Christian sense, which is not always that associated with 
it in psychological works. 

2In Mens Creatrix I pressed this to the paradoxical extremity of 
allowing no finality to any knowledge at all, short of omniscience; this 
I should not repudiate. But it remains true that the search for Truth 
leads to the apprehension of an ever-widening context, so that it 
never affords the finite mind any such repose of satisfaction as may 
be reached in the search for Beauty. I should like to take this oppor- 
tunity of recommending readers of Mens Creatrix to consider the 
searching criticism of some of its positions contained in Professor A. 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 35 


apparent exception is Mathematics, but Mathematics 
reaches its perfect cogency by an abstraction so com- 
plete that it may be said to have turned its back on 
Reality and to be a science of notions only. The 
internal angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
angles; that is absolute truth, but only because the 
meaning of ‘‘triangle” and ‘‘right angle” is fixed by 
definition. ‘To know this does not give us any abso- 
lute knowledge of any object existing in space, it gives 
us absolute knowledge only of the implications of our 
definitions. Only in this sphere of abstractions is ab- 
solute knowledge attainable. Truth claims our alle- 
giance but always eludes our grasp; but the intellectual 
correlation with Reality can be perfect in the sense 
that the mind is always ready to apprehend rightly 
even though there is much which is in fact not yet 
apprehended. 

The apprehension of Beauty proceeds by another 
method. Here attention is narrowly concentrated 
upon some one object; the understanding of it that 
is sought consists in intimacy of acquaintance, not in 
completeness of analysis. For this reason the artist 
must select. We cannot achieve an intimate acquaint- 
ance with a vast range of facts. Selection must go to 
the point where apprehension is possible in one act— 
however prolonged—of concentrated attention. We 
must be able to see the whole picture at once, and not 
have to piece it together by a deliberate mental con- 
struction. ‘This limits the scope of apprehensible 


E. Taylor’s review of the book in Mind, N.S. 106. Some of his ob- 
jections are due to misapprehension of my meaning: some now seem 
to me to be valid. 


36 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Beauty, but it also means that an absolute apprehen- 
sion of absolute Beauty is possible for us. For though 
there may be a richer Beauty apprehensible to beings 
with a wider range of faculties, yet because concentra- 
tion and not discursiveness is the essence of esthetic 
method, there can be an experience of Beauty which is 
perfect in its own kind. Homer’s material is less 
rich and varied than Shakespeare’s, but Shakespeare 
has not made Homer out of date; that simple material 
will only exhibit its value to him who concentrates 
his attention on it alone. There is, therefore, possible 
to us an absolute apprehension of absolute Beauty 
such as is not possible of absolute Truth. 

The same is true of Goodness; but here our task 
is not so much to admire Goodness elsewhere as to 
create it in ourselves. Man’s obligation is not chiefly 
to admire goodness but to be good. And this con- 
sists, as has been said and as will be set forth at more 
length shortly, in the achievement of internal and 
external unity. Jf a man’s whole being is organized 
to the fulfillment of one purpose, and that purpose is 
the fulfillment of his contribution to the universal good, 
he has reached perfect goodness. He has no need to 
be omniscient for this. If he can regard his life not 
from the standpoint of self-interest, but from that 
of God who looks upon the whole society of men from 
without, so that he is perfectly just not only in con- 
science, but even in desire, and can perfectly con- 
trol his impulses to live according to such a view of 
his place in the scheme of things, he is a perfectly 
good man. 

Thus the whole Truth of God could not find ex- 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 37 


pression in a human life, but the perfection of intel- 
lectual virtue ' can do so; the whole of apprehensible 
Beauty could not be concentrated in one human con- 
sciousness, though perfect Beauty of many kinds 
and grades can be realized there; the whole Goodness 
of God can in its completeness be expressed in a human 
life. We do not now discuss what conditions are req- 
uisite for this to happen; we are only concerned at 
present to assert its possibility in principle. 

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are all absolute 
Values; they are good in themselves, apart from all 
consequences. But they may in experience become 
rivals through force of circumstance; there may be in- 
sufficient time for the fulfillment of some apparent so- 
cial duty as well as for complete dedication to Science 
orto Art. Where such a choice has to be made, no man 
may judge his brother. But in principle Goodness 
has a priority over the other two because it is the 
distinctively human type of value and we are human. 
Indeed when we follow after Truth and Beauty with 
an absolute devotion, if we are not neglecting some 
other and yet stronger claim, we are manifesting 
Goodness. But itis possible to pursue these selfishly, 
not for their absolute value but for our own pleasure 
alike in the pursuit and the attainment; and then our 
conduct is wrong; for we are not responding to any 
absolute obligation but to our own desire for our own 
enjoyment. Goodness cannot be so pursued. We 
may do the acts of goodness from selfish motives— 
desire for admiration or fear of censure. But good- 


17. e. the readiness of the mind to apprehend rightly whatever it 
may have the opportunity to apprehend. 


38 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


ness of character itself must be sought for itself or it 
is not sought at all. Truth and Beauty are absolute 
values, and it is good that we should seek them; but 
they are not distinctively human; Truth we appre- 
hend but do not create; Beauty we both appreciate 
and create, but appreciation predominates, for much 
of the Beauty of the world exists apart from our pro- 
duction of it, and so far as our activity creates Beauty, 
it is largely imitative. It is true, indeed, that appreci- 
ation is a very real activity, and I believe that it is in 
fact an activity of discovering in Art or in Nature the 
kindred spirit of the Artist (Divine or human) there 
self-expressed; and the essential moment in creation 
and appreciation of Beauty is this expression and 
recognition of spirit.1 It remains true, however, that 
appreciation is not creation. But Goodness, in the 
whole world, so far as we know it, isa human creation; 
here, too, we appreciate and imitate. But each man 
must live his own life; imitation should never predom- 
inate; and moral goodness is an achievement of man- 
kind, so that if we take mankind as a unit we find here 
an original contribution to the scheme of things, where 
no imitation is possible except of God himself. 

We have now considered various types of Values, 
and must proceed to ask what is the nature of Value 
itself. If our whole position is sound, no definition 
is possible; you cannot state the Genus and Differentia 
of your highest principle. But characteristics can be 
stated. We find, then, that for any actual Value or 
Good there must be two factors in a certain relation- 
ship—the “valuable” object and the apprehending 


1Cf. Balfour, Theism and Humanism, pp. 55-04, specially 77-81. 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 39 


and appreciating subject; and these must meet in 
an experience which “‘satisfies” or is fit for perma- 
nence. We shall see later that only the ‘‘good”’ char- 
acter affords the inner condition of permanence on the 
subjective side, so that the apparent actualization of 
Value represented by base pleasures is illusory. We 
shall further see that the “‘good”’ character is one 
which has achieved inner and outer totality or com- 
prehensive unity; the objects which such a character 
accounts ‘‘valuable” are found to have this same 
quality; they’re all marked by totality. Science seeks 
a totality of perpetually wider extension; Art seeks 
a totality of perfected inner unity; Goodness is the 
achievement of inner unity in the individual and ex- 
tended unity in the society—totality in both. Value 
in short is a system of experience in which a subject 
free from inner causes of change finds satisfaction in 
an object which (therefore) it does not seek to change. 
Its type is God’s eternal contemplation of His perfect 
work. It is not a relation of subject and object or of 
object and object; it is a unitary system of experience 
in which such relations have their place. Because it is 
a subject-object system, perfectly co-related, the ob- 
ject must reveal the characteristics of Mind and the 
subject must be absorbed in the object. Hence springs 
the demand for intellectual or logical structure in 
works of Art. Mind discovers itself in the Real, and 
in the discovery becomes its full self: that is Value or 
Good. But Mind will only perfectly discover itself 
in other minds; therefore Fellowship is the true norm 
of Value, and Love its perfect realization. 

One other consideration claims attention—the re- 


40 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


lation of Value to the Time-process. Many of the 
highest values are found in activities or experiences 
lasting through considerable periods of time—pre- 
sumably the highest of all is in the experience which 
comprehends the whole range of Time and Space. 
When we study the experiences in which our finite 
minds can apprehend Value and which require a 
process of time for their actualization—such as a 
drama or a man’s life or a nation’s history—we find 
that the value of the whole is by no means the same 
as the total or the average of all its stages. Thus 
we may consider two plays in three acts: in one 
the ‘first act is cheerful, the second neutral, the 
third depressing; here the total effect is depressing. 
In the other the first act is full of gloom, the second 
shows a dawn of hope, and the third is joyful: here 
the whole effect is triumphant. The Value of an 
experience lasting through a period of time depends 
on its tendency and conclusion, not upon the stages 
in isolation. 

This carries with it the supremely important princi- — 
ple that, though past facts cannot be altered, their 
value can, so that the presence of evil in the world 
at any monent or through any period of time is not 
in principle any argument against the perfect good- 
ness of the Whole. 

That is a consideration of supreme importance, 
because of the close relationship that exists between 
Value and Totality. In all Value, as we saw just 
now, Totality is the distinguishing feature. Totality 
is the very form of the Good; this is the ‘‘ perfection” 
of which St. Thomas speaks in the words quoted 


THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE AI 


above.t But the Whole, for us, is the Will of God 
and what it has created; therefore every apprehen- 
sion of Value is in principle a religious experience. 
Hocking ? argues that in our sense perception of Na- 
ture there is already an apprehension of God. I think 
this is true. Certainly there is no apprehension of 
Value which is not an inchoate apprehension of God 
—and no human experience is utterly without value. 


NCH Dp: 14. 
2 Op. Cit. pp. 268-300, specially pp. 297, 298. 


CHAPTER HI 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Those obstinate questionings 

Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings; 

Blank misgivings of a Creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised. 

WORDSWORTH. 


To be conscious of absolute value and the absolute 
obligation which it imposes is plainly a direct aware- 
ness of something ultimate in the universe; and if 
the position already taken up with regard to Value 
is correct, then it is a direct awareness of what in all 
creation is most fundamental. It is a consciousness 
of the very object of the Creative Will; it is thus of 
itself a knowledge of God. 

But for a vast multitude of people it not only is, 
but is directly experienced as being, a knowledge of 
God. All men have conscience; that is, all men to 
some extent judge their actual character and conduct 
by comparison with an ideal formed from their sense 
of absolute goodness. Many men experience this 
ideal as God’s will for them; and so conscience becomes 
the channel of religious experience. It is so that re- 
ligious experience comes to most men, at any rate 
to most men born and brought up in a Christian civili- 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 43 


zation. Among primitive peoples, perhaps, it is the 
sense of vastness rather than the sense of value that 
chiefly leads to a sense of the divine power; man finds 
himself very small and helpless in face of a world 
vast and unaccountable, and he imagines spirits, 
mostly hostile, who must be endlessly placated. He 
is not utterly wrong; he is applying very crudely 
the conviction that only Will adequately accounts for 
anything. And the influence of his mental attitude 
still persists; in face of great manifestations of natural 
forces, especially in face of great calamities, men begin 
to speak of the Hand of God, who never use such 
phrases about small events or trace His Hand in the 
movement of the tides or the phases of the moon. 
But when once the influence of that ethical monothe- 
ism, which came to the world through Israel, has 
taken possession of men’s minds, the normal channel 
for religious experience is conscience.! 

It is necessary to insist on this, for some psychol- 
ogists have tended to confine the phrase ‘‘religious 
experience ”’ to moments of personal awareness of the 

1 Conscience, at its fullest development, passes into Love, but stages 
below that level of supreme attainment must be included here. 

This book was already in proof before I read Rudolf Otto’s im- 
portant study of The Idea of the Holy (Das Heilige). I think he makes 
good his contention that there is something ultimate in religious 
experience, of which the nature may be expressed in the phrase 
“Mysterium Tremendum.” Deity presents itself as in one aspect 
“wholly other” and thus utterly unintelligible; and the human re- 
sponse is “‘awe” or “dread.” But my own experience of this, which 
Otto calls the Numinous, is chiefly occasioned (apart from the Gospel 
story) by the Vastness of the Universe and the Authority of the 
Moral Law. So it was, of course, for Kant; and so it is, I believe, 
for most persons in a reflective age. 


44 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


presence of God. Of course they are perfectly at 
liberty to study such momentary experiences in isola- 
tion; but they must not suppose or suggest that these 
moments constitute the whole or even the chief part 
of the “religious experience” on which religious men 
rely as part of the confirmatory evidence for their be- 
liefs. William James, in his celebrated Varieties of 
Religious Experience, is a conspicuous offender in this 
matter. Philosophers have encouraged the same bad 
tendency, for they have often drawn their illustrations 
of religious experience exclusively from the mystics. 
Mysticism is indeed the extreme development of 
religion pure and simple; but just because it is religion 
pure and simple, it is on one side unrepresentative of 
religion. For religion is not departmental; it takes 
life as a whole for its sphere; and “religious experi- 
ence”’ is not an affair of isolated moments, it is a whole 
experience of life and the world, permeated through 
and through with religion. In certain moments, no 
doubt, the whole significance of this is gathered up; 
but those moments derive the greater part of their 
importance from the fact that they neither are, nor 
are thought ‘to be, isolated or unique in kind; they 
are important precisely because they bring to clear 
and vivid consciousness what is permanently present 
as a background to all experience. 

To the religious man every activity is religious. 
He eats and drinks religiously, of which “grace” at 
meals is the symbol; he works religiously, for his 
work is his life-service to God; he plays religiously, 
for his recreation is with thanksgiving; but above all 
he sins religiously. To do wrong is for an irreligious 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE A5 


man to abandon his ideal and perhaps to lower his 
self-respect. For the religious man to do wrong is 
to defy his King; for the Christian, it is to wound his. 
Brend4e Lt isuhere that4for many people the dis- 
tinctively religious experience is most acute. 

But the validity of this experience is challenged as 
the validity of other experience is not challenged. 
The validity of sight is not challenged, though we do 
not always believe that a man actually saw what he 
seemed to himself to see. Here, however, it appears 
that the whole validity is challenged; we are told by 
some that the religious experience is purely subjective 
and has no counterpart in the objective world at all, 
while others, who stop short of that, would say that, 
though the experience has an objective counterpart, 
this is not in the least what religious people have 
supposed it to be. 

It is not possible here to discuss the psychology of 
religious experience; but it is necessary to describe the 
attitude adopted towards it in this argument. First, 
then, I would say that in all perceptive experience 
there is an apprehension of a given somewhat; we 
do not have experiences and infer the object which 
occasions them; the experience 7s the apprehension 
of the object. But this does not tell us beyond all 
question what the object is; that is a matter for a \ 
reflective and critical process, which always goes 
beyond what can be said to be immediately given in 
perception. But though it goes beyond what is im-. 
mediately given, it does not go away from it; on the 
contrary it interprets what it truly is. Moreover, 
all our experience contains this element of interpre- 


46 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


tation from the outset. We never experience a mere 
‘““This.”’ The reflective process may be very elabor- 
ate, as it is in a fully developed science; but it is not a 
process of theorizing about a given and unchanging 
fact at an ever-greater distance from it; it is the ever- 
fuller articulation of what the fact has been from the 
first. In these respects there is no difference in prin- 
ciple between religious experience and any other 
experience which claims by its nature to be an appre- 
hension of reality. 

Secondly, however, we have to admit that this 
experience has to vindicate itself against the charge 
of illusion, which is brought here and is not brought 
against the experience of sight and hearing. Psychol- 
ogists are ready to provide a variety of accounts of the 
process whereby the religious experience is generated 
in the soul. And if the weight of the general philo- 
sophic argument were plainly adverse to the theistic 
interpretation of the world, I should, for myself, con- 
sider that a case for 1t could hardly be made out from 
the data of specifically religious experience alone. 
But in fact the weight of the general philosophic ar- 
gument tells, in my judgment, decisively the other 
way; I should say this even if the specific religious 
experience were excluded from consideration in the 
formulation of this general philosophic argument, 
though to exclude it is plainly unscientific. When 
we find that the general argument points to the exist- 
ence of God, we are naturally more ready to pay 
a specially serious attention to such experience as 
seems to those, to whom it comes, to be a direct appre- 
hension of the divine. The true case for Theism does 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 47 


not rest upon general philosophy alone nor upon re- 
ligious experience alone, but upon the coincidence 
or convergence of these two. 

Our general position, then, with regard to religious 
experience will be that it must, indeed, be examined 
and tested like any other experience for which the 
claim is made that in it we apprehend reality, but that 
there is no objection in principle to this claim when 
made for this type of experience. 

The objection is usually based on the supposition 
that some men have no religious experience at all. 
But this is very doubtful and seems even to be false. 
There are many men who pay little attention to their 
religious experience, and in whom (often for that rea- 
son) it is rudimentary; there are many who do not 
recognize it for what it is. But it is doubtful if any 
man can go through life without ever feeling rever- 
ence for something which is morally so high above 
him as to be out of his reach, or awe before the great 
Reality on which he is utterly dependent. And it 
may safely be said that no one escapes, though he may 
to his own satisfaction explain away, the sense of ab- 
solute obligation. All of these are in their true nature 
religious experiences—the recognition of an Abso- 
lute. To understand them fully will of itself carry ‘ 
a man far into theology. If his reverence and his awe 
are justified, they imply a Reality fit to be their occa- 
sion. If he is genuinely subject to the obligation, that 
implies a universe in which obligation has a place. 
Of all the various forms of undeveloped or unsophisti- 
cated religious experience, this sense of absolute obli- 
gation is the most certainly universal and the most 


48 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


commonly recognized. It is on this, therefore, that 
our argument will chiefly rest. 

The absolute obligation due to the absolute Value 
of Truth and Beauty is a command of God and a 
means of access to Him; but it is in the claim of Good- 
ness that this command is most universally found and 
the access to God most fully effected. Truth has its 
necessary place, for all religious life involves some 
belief, and that belief is a theology and philosophy. 
Beauty has its place, for there must be expression of 
our faith and adoration; and what adequately expresses 
these must be beautiful. But Goodness comes first 
because we are men, and Goodness is the value which 
is actualized by men alone, and is therefore the specific 
human value; thus it is the Truth or Reality of man, 
and may be described as Truth expressed, and so made 
beautiful, in human life. 

That does not mean that religion can rightly be- 
come an affair of well-doing only. If aman has found 
God as his King and Father, or rather has been found 
of Him, God becomes the chief factor in his environ- 
ment, and there must be activities directly expressive 
of relationship to Him. Worship comes first, then 
service inspired by worship; prayer first, then con- 
duct. It will help to make clear the nature of religious 
experience and its relation to some kindred forms of 
experience if we set out this point more fully, though 
in doing so we must draw on forms of religious ex- 
perience which imply theological or metaphysical 
beliefs which have still to be justified. 

Prayer is often regarded, even by genuinely reli- 
gious people, as chiefly a means to various ends; it is 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AQ 


a way of getting things done. That is true, so far as 
it goes; but, like so many half-truths, it is in practice 
as misleading as a complete falsehood. Prayer which 
is mainly occupied with a result to be obtained is 
comparatively powerless to obtain results. The real 
significance of prayer lies in the fact that it is the effort 
and attitude of the soul which makes possible the unity 
of the human spirit with God; it is therefore itself 
the supreme aim of human existence. Only when it 
is experienced and valued as itself the goal of life is 
its secondary quality, as producing results beyond 
itself, fully operative. For it is only then that the 
human spirit reaches the maturity of its powers; it is 
only then that the infinite resources of omnipotence 
can play upon the world through human instrumen- 
tality. 

The essence of prayer is intercourse with God; 
and that is the goal of human evolution. By means 
of prayer we may sometimes obtain for ourselves or 
for others temporal benefits; we may lift ourselves 
or others above the range of some perilous temptation; 
we may help forward deserving causes; we may in- 
crease the volume of goodwill. But all of these, even 
the last, are secondary in nature and in importance. 
The primary and fundamental matter in every real 
prayer is that a human soul is once again, or perhaps 
for the first time, holding intercourse with its Father. 

Religion thus comes into close contact with much 
that is seldom called religious. Science in its greatest 
phases is an intercourse of the mind of man with the © 
Mind expressed in the universe. In philosophy a 
deliberate effort is undertaken to reach some degree of 


50 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


communion with the Absolute Mind or Spirit. A 
pupil of Edward Caird can confidently testify that the 
philosophic life may have in it more of real prayer than 
is to be found in very many devotional exercises. The 
artists and the poets perpetually rise to heights of 
spiritual achievement which supply a model to the 
religious aspirant. ! 

Communion with the Eternal is probably not quite 
unknown to any human being. Whenever a man 
feels the constraint of moral obligation, he is in touch 
with the Eternal; for the maxim “because right is 
right to follow right” is no creature of Time. But to 
most men the sphere in which, outside religion, this 
highest experience is most often reached is the sphere 
of art. As one looks upon the picture, held fast in 
concentrated peace by its compelling beauty, he enters 
eternity; the whole period of his contemplation is, in 
Browning’s phrase, a ‘““moment eternal’: a moment, 
because there is no sense of duration; eternal, because 
the meaning of such an experience is a completed 
whole, which asks for no explanations from past origins 
or future destiny. As we surrender ourselves to the 
surge of a great symphony, floating upon oceans of 
sound wherein the intertwined melodies and rhythms 
vanish in the mighty mass they constitute, the same 
experience is ours. Not in spite of the storm and 
tumult but even because of it, we are at peace in our 
unity with the inner reality of all things. In the 
climax of artistic endeavor—tragedy—this is most 
abundantly true. The vast conflict rages, the over- 
powering emotions topple and sway, the catastrophe 
crashes down and crushes out the hero with both his 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 51 


ambitions and his agonies; but terror is redeemed by 
beauty, and the reader or spectator is established in a 
final peace which is not only untroubled but knows 
that nothing now can trouble it, because it has faced 
the worst and found therein occasion for its solemn 
joy. In such an experience man shares in his tiny 
measure the august pastime of the Eternal. 

In prayer that fulfills its function the religious man 
by his own methods scales those self-same heights. 
But there is a difference which makes the work of 
prayer more difficult, but also, when it is perfect, 
nobler. 

The ‘‘cosmic consciousness,” as it is sometimes 
called, may be induced by art in such a way as to omit 
all ethical or social content, and even so as to make 
us forgetful of. moral obligations. The man who is 
entranced by music does not find himself brought by 
his rapture into charity with all men; rather he finds 
their vulgarity and obtuseness at such a time pecul- 
iarly repellant. And though the esthetic ecstasy is 
not self-centered or selfish (for the initiate is far too 
absorbed in what he contemplates through eyes or ears 
to attend even to his own joy in contemplation), it is 
not social; it is subpersonal. The qualities which 
make fellowship a possibility are not exercised. There 
is no need for human companionship in those mo- 
ments; for comedy we need companionship, but not 
for tragedy; the heights to. which we are called are 
austere in loneliness. And on these we find no one 
waiting for us. Beethoven, perhaps, composed the 
symphony that carries us into the sublimities; but we 
do not meet him there and hold intercourse with him. 


52 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Nothing at all occurs to call our social qualities into 
play, nor is there any place for the action of our wills. 

In prayer the exact contrary is the fact. Not as 
mere appreciative intelligences do we pray, but as 
children who want to be with their Father, as friends 
who must mark off certain times to enjoy the com- 
pany of their Friend. This Father is the composer of 
the music of the spheres; this Friend is the author of 
the tremendous drama of history. To enter into His 
mind is to be on the high places to which art aspires; 
but it is to be there in company. This method only 
leads us to its goal as we become one in moral charac- 
ter with God; for this is partly the meaning and partly 
the result of being in the company of God. Only the 
pure in heart can see Him; only by longing for Him 
do men become pure in heart; only by His own im- 
pulse do men begin to long for Him. Prayer is a cor- 
respondence with the impulse of God to draw us to 
Himself. 

If God were merely the Mind which grasps the 
universe as a single intelligible whole, prayer and 
philosophy would be indistinguishable. But even 
philosophy knows that He must be more than that. 
If He is to supply the principle whereby the universe 
is an intelligible whole at all, He must be the source 
of righteousness no less than of truth and of beauty. 
Correspondence with His impulse therefore involves 
righteousness of will. This is one reason why prayer 
is a harder way of ascent to the spiritual heights than 
philosophy or art; it is also one reason why the achieve- 
ment, if attained, is nobler. A completer humanity 
is carried to the lofty regions. By this method there 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 53 


can be no ecstasy that is devoid of charity. For God 
is Love; and only by love do men draw near to Him. 
None can come into that Presence for his own benefit — 
alone. The key that unlocks the door of the presence- 
chamber is love, without which all vitality of under- 
standing and sensibility is accounted death. 

From this two conclusions follow. A self-centered 
devotion, or a religious life which has self-perfection 
as its goal, can never reach the innermost shrine of 
divine communion. Rather there is required of us 
a love so intense that it will not let us enter that shrine 
and dwell there until all others are won to enter also. 
Here is one of the divine paradoxes. To be in heaven 
is to be with God; and God is Love; so that whoever 
loves most is most in heaven. Yet love, which admits 
to heaven, will not let us dwell in heaven while there 
are still men on earth who have no desire for heaven. 
In the crucial instance we know that this is true. God 
is never so much God as in the moment when, accept- 
ing the world’s load of evil, He feels Himself to be 
deserted by God. 

And secondly, because there is work to do in bring- 
ing others to desire the Life Divine, true prayer is 
always accompanied by appropriate conduct. Indeed 
if prayer and conduct are both perfect, no distinction 
can be drawn between them. But those who live 
at various levels of imperfection know from their own 
experience the difference between the times when 
their whole attention is concentrated on God Himself 
and the times when their attention is concentrated 
on some task which is believed to be appointed them 
by Him. 


54 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


The Western mind sets great store by doing; and 
it is right. But it is not so wholly right that it can 
afford to ignore the witness of the East to the primacy 
of Being. We tend to test all energies by their re- 
sults in conduct. If prayer makes men lead better 
lives—by which most people mean, do better deeds— 
then it is justified; if not, it is a harmless occupation, 
provided that the time allowed to it is not excessive. 
So men often think, and sometimes say. But in simple 
truth, prayer—the corresponding of men with God’s 
impulse to draw them to Himself—is the highest 
occupation in which a man can be engaged. That 
is not to say that endlessly ‘“‘saying prayers” or joining 
in forms of worship is of this dignity. It may be so; 
and where the spirit of true prayer breathes through 
the words and ritual acts it is so; but there are many 
who in their worship are not opening their souls to 
the divine influence, and are rather indulging a re- 
ligious sentiment than conforming their wills to God. 
Such worshipers correspond to the sensualists who 
make their artistic skill play pander to the baser pas- 
sions. ‘‘By their fruits ye shall know them.” Does 
their religious emotion leave them in charity with 
all men? A man or woman who has merely been in- 
dulging a religious sentiment will be censorious 
towards what clashes with that sentiment—coarse- 
ness, vulgarity, blatancy. A man or woman who has 
been in communion with perfect Love is filled with 
love—at least in greater measure than before—towards 
all to whom the Love Divine goes forth. 

So the proper relation in thought between prayer 
and conduct is not that conduct is supremely impor- 


RELIGIOUS EXPERENCE 55 


tant and prayer may help it, but that prayer is su- 
premely important and conduct tests it. If the prayer 
is real, the conduct inevitably follows. Indeed, in 
many cases the very reality of prayer will shorten the 
time allotted to prayer, so strong will be the impulse 
of love to act for the well-being of others. But let any 
man who finds it thus with him take heed. The life 
with God is the supreme concern, and the source of all 
power to serve. It is only the man who loves God with 
all his being who will be able to love his neighbor as 
himself. 







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CHAPTER IV 
THE NATURE OF MAN 


“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infi- 
nite in faculties! in form and action how express and admirable! in’ 
action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty 
of the world! the paragon of animals! ”—SHAKESPEARE. 

THE structure of Reality as outlined in our first chap- 
ter is most fully illustrated—within our experience— 
by Man. It is possible, or at least arguable, that Man 
does not represent the fullest development hitherto 
of one line of evolution, but is rather the representa- 
tive of one among several lines. Thus it may be that 
Bergson is right in refusing to regard intelligence as 
in any way superior to instinct, and in maintaining 
that these two terms express different and largely 
incompatible lines of evolution.t The higher animals 
should in that case not be regarded as of necessity 
“lower” than man; they may be, at least biologically, 
at an equally advanced stage on another line of devel- 
opment. Yet it still remains true that, within our 
experience, human nature is the fullest illustration. 
In our bodies we belong to the physical, chemical, 
vegetable, and animal worlds; these bodies are largely 
directed by our minds or intelligences; our minds 
are capable of being directed by spirit, or, in other 
words, of exerting themselves in the fulfillment of 
obligation. We shall therefore learn more about the 


1 [ Evolution Creatrice, pp. 146 ff. 


60 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


true nature and meaning of Reality from the study of 
man, in all his activities, than from any other study; 
and human nature will be more capable of expressing 
the Creative Will than any other created thing known 
to us. How far it may be capable of this, our study of 
man must help us to determine. 

As we ascend in the scale of complexity or richness 
of being, the most important transition is that from 
Thing to Person.1 The Thing has these three char- 


acteristics: (a) it has no significant individuality, | 


(b) it acts only as it is impelled from without, (c) it 
- has no sentience or point of view. It is easy to illus- 
trate these points: (a) no doubt every brick in a heap 
has some real differentia, whereby it is distinguished 
from every other brick, but this is (so to speak) exter- 
nal and irrelevant—it is the third or the ninety- 
seventh to pass through its particular mold as com- 
pared with the sixth or the eighty-fifth. Its material 
or the fashion of its baking may have made it a bad 
brick—porous or in some other way defective; but 
even then its badness is thought of as typical rather 
than individual. One brick does as well as another of 
the same pattern, unless it be faulty; and then it is only 
a bad brick. The individuality of the brick does not 
count. (0) Similarly it cannot direct its own motion. 
If the billiard-table is flat and the ball round, the ball 
will remain still until it is struck and will then follow 
the line imposed upon it by the impinging body— 
the cue or another ball; and if the ball rolls without 
being struck, it must be either because the table is not 


1Cf, my lectures on The Nature of Personality for a more detailed 
exposition of this point. 


as 


THE NATURE OF MAN 61 


flat or because the ball is not round, and its motion is a 
mere instance of the general law of gravitation. (c) 
Consequently, having neither individuality nor self- 
direction, the thing has no sentience or point of view. 
A cricketer feels no moral obligation to keep his bat 
out of the way of a fast ball for fear lest the violent 
impact may hurt the ball. He takes it for granted— 
not that he is under no obligation to consider the ball’s 
point of view but—that the ball has no point of view 
which even could be considered. 

As we pass from the purely physical and chemical 
world to the vegetable world, we find the beginnings 
of self-motion in the phenomenon of growth. There 
is in the vegetable a principle which determines its 
reaction to environment, so that from the same soil 
and the same water two plants draw the nourishment 
of quite different forms of foliage and the like. As 
we pass to the animal world, the power of self-motion 
is completely present, and variety in modes of reaction 
is still richer; moreover sentience has appeared, and 
with it a ‘‘point of view’’—both of which are generally 
assumed to be lacking in vegetables. We assume 
(rightly or wrongly) that a plant suffers no pain when 
its flowers are picked, and it seems certain that any 
sentience there is must be quite rudimentary; ! but 
the animal is capable of pleasure and pain; which im- 
mediately involves the obligation to consider its point 
of view in the treatment of it. A man may pick a 
flower off a plant solely to please himself; but he must 

1In the border cases—such as the Rotifer or the Fly-catcher—we 


generally assume some rudimentary. sentience as a concomitant of 
the rudimentary power of self-motion. 


62 CHRIST ‘THE TROTH 


not pull the head off a kitten or even the wings off 
a fly. And with sentience appears the beginning of 
real Individuality. Of course in a purely logical sense 
every existent thing is an individual—that is, it is a 
particular instance of some general kind. And every 
division of reality will always leave individuals; no 
process of analysis can get behind individuality. But 
in the lower stages the particular or distinctive ele- 
ment is almost negligible; in the extreme instance 
it is reduced to mere This-ness. Among animals the 
distinctive character of the particular animal may be 
as marked as its generic qualities. Every one who 
has enjoyed the friendship of a dog or cat knows this. 
Certainly among human beings the distinctive quali- 
ties of each are fully as important as the generic qual- 
ities. It is only ignorance or laziness that leads people 
to speak in generic terms about groups of individuals, 
as if in that way something very important could be | 
said. There is a real group consciousness; but this | 
does not mean a uniform type of consciousness end- ‘ 
lessly reproduced in all the individuals of the group. 
Individuality is one of the dominant elements in the\ 
Nature of Man; and the more that any one is truly | 
individual, so much the more is he truly human. The 
justification for this proposition will become apparent 
as we proceed; the proposition itself is of fundamental 
importance for ethics and politics. 

The greater prominence of individuality in human 
nature as compared with other types of existence 
known to us corresponds with, and is largely due to, 
the increased “time-span”’ possible from the “point 
of view” of a human being. We agree that an animal, 


THE NATURE OF MAN 63 


being sentient, has a ‘‘point of view,” involving a 
claim to consideration. But this seems to be limited 
to the present. A dog is indeed capable of something 
very like a ‘‘purpose”’ in his loyalty which may rise 
even to devotion; but it seems likely that this only 
becomes apparent in the activities which it prompts, 
and is never present to the consciousness of the dog as 
a principle fitted to control all possible actions for an 
indefinite period of time. Consequently, while a dog 
may fairly be said to have a “character” and even 
“moral qualities,” he cannot reasonably be said to 
have “‘moral principles.”” He has a memory, and can 
have hopes; but he has not (one supposes) an ideal 
towards which he constantly strives. 

This capacity for forming ideals is distinctively 
human. In man we find not only a character which 
does in fact express itself in appropriate actions, but 
also an apprehension of principles by which it is recog- 
nized that conduct ought to be guided even if in fact 
itis not so guided. This is made possible by the capac- 
ity of the human mind to contemplate in one act un- 
limited stretches of time, so that its generalizations 
with regard to its own possible reactions to circum- 
stance can be really universal principles. Moreover, 
inasmuch as the mind both can and does apprehend 
principles far beyond its present actual achievement, 
the future (which we generally suppose to be present 
in the vaguest form or not at all to the minds of ani- 
mals) becomes to man the predominant interest. It 
is a distinguishing mark of full Personality that for 
persons the future is more interesting and more im- 
portant than the past, or even the present. 


64 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


It is because man is capable of ideals and principles — 
that he becomes a subject of Rights and Duties as 
distinct from mere claims and counterclaims. The 
sense of Obligation carries a man beyond the calcula- 
tion of means devised for the realization of ends which 
are fixed by instinct or desire. It leads him to think 
of himself as a person in a society of persons. Conse- 
quently the same qualities which make him supremely 
individual stamp his individuality as fundamentally 
and inherently social. If by the term Fellowship we 
may denote the deliberate association of free persons, , 
then it is true to say that “Personality is the capacity | 
for Fellowship.” 

The uniqueness of individuality must not be inter- 
preted as even a relative independence of environment. 
Neither the mind nor the spirit of man has such inde- 
pendence. All our growth proceeds by reaction. The 
word education means Nourishment. Mental like 
bodily nourishment depends upon the reception of 
food from without, and the subsequent assimilation 
of it. The mind quite as much as the body depends 
on supplies from without. The main part of educa- 
tion 1s always the work of direct experience, and the 
part of the educator is to select and, in some degree, 
to mold the sort of experience by which the growing 
mind is to be influenced. Thus a good school is a 
highly artificial social organization designed to pro- 
mote full participation in social life, with its discipline 
of responsibility, at an age when apart from such a 
deliberate organization real membership in a society 
is impossible. A child is not a full “member” of its 


1 Educat nutrix. 


THE NATURE OF MAN 65 


family, for the child cannot have, and ought not to 
have, a responsibility similar to that of its parents. 
By deliberately constructing societies of children or 
of adolescents we make possible an educative experi- 
ence that would otherwise be lacking. In addition to 
learning or growing by what may thus be described 
as in a special sense “its own” experience, the mind 
grows by intercourse with other minds more mature 
than itself. This intercourse it finds in its relations 
with parents, teachers, and the authors of books. But 
in all cases the two stages of the process are equally 
indispensable; nourishment must be both supplied 
and assimilated. 

Every human mind is potentially a focusing point 
for the whole range of possible experience, that is of 
the whole universe. It will have its own angle of 
vision, its own dominant interests to guide its atten- 
tion, its own order of experiencing different aspects 
of the world. But it is in potency a mirror for all 
reality; and it grows, not by isolation, but by re- 
ceiving and assimilating perpetually greater wealth 
of experience. 

Greatness of mind is therefore primarily a matter of | 
receptivity. There is an average capacity for assimi- 
lating experience, and when there is some divergence 
from this, otherwise than by relative defect, we have 
originality. Sometimes this takes the form of special 
sensitiveness to a particular aspect of reality; then 
we have a one-sided development which, if it is suffi- 
cient, produces both the “genius” and the ‘‘freak.” 
Sometimes it takes the form of a greater general sensi- 
tiveness, and then we find all-round “greatness.” 


66 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


The great man is not less dependent on his environ- 
ment than others; he is dependent to exactly the 
same extent; but the environment on which he is 
dependent (or to which he is responsive) is greater. 
So he seems independent of circumstances, because he 
is comparatively unmoved by those changes and 
chances which profoundly disturb his neighbors. But 
the truth about him is a deeper and wider dependence, 
not a comparative independence. The great individ- 
ual is not the man who grows in the nearest approach 
to isolation; whoever does this will remain the nearest 
approach to a perfect idiot; the great individual is the 
man who is reacting to the greatest number of the 
elements in Reality, the greatest variety of its aspects. 
If he could become apprehensive of all its Truth, ap- 
preciative of all its Beauty, worthy of all its Goodness 
—conducting a corresponding range of activities in 
perfect accord with his receptivity, he would be the 
ideally great man, the perfect individual. 

It is clear that the relative importance and interest 
of the various elements in experience depend upon 
the other elements with which they are compared. 
To a child the smashing of a toy may cause sorrow 
that almost breaks the heart; for attention had be- 
come fastened on the toy, and it was the center of all 
interest. ‘The grown man will not (or should not) have 
such intense emotion over a similiar misfortune, be- 
cause he sees it in relation to other interests which 
make it seem trifling. So the hero comes to think of 
of his own death as relatively unimportant, and the 
saint becomes indifferent to the greatest of temporal 
calamities: “I have put my trust in God,” he says; 


THE NATURE OF MAN 67 


“and will not fear what flesh can do unto me.” ! So 
Christ teaches His disciples to see all things in 
the context of eternity: ‘Fear not them which kill 
the body, and after that have no more which they 
ean do,? 

It follows that every element in Reality, as it is 
focused in any finite mind, derives its tone or color 
from the elements already apprehended and assimi- 
lated by that mind. So in its finite centers of con- 
sciousness the Universe perpetually realizes new types 
of experience due to the fresh blending in new com- 
binations of the old elements. In every mind there is 
some peculiarity of experience; and inasmuch as the 
process by which we reach any mental or spiritual re- 
sult not only colors that result but is truly conserved 
in it, this peculiarity and distinctness of one mind 
from another will endure for ever, even though as they 
develop they are found to have received and assimi- 
lated identical material. 

From what has been said in the last few paragraphs 
it might .be supposed that Determinism is a true ac- 
count of the formation of character. But it omits 
a vital part of the truth. Indeed, if taken quite strictly 
Determinism is sheer nonsense. It declares that of all 
the entities composing the universe, each is what it is 
solely as a result of the influence of the others. But 
this is true of each of the others also, and if everything 
is made what it is entirely by the influence of other 
things, the process of mutual determination can never 
start. Every entity—every section into which Reality 
can be mentally divided—contains something that is 


1 Psalm lvi. 4. 2'St. Luke xii. 4. 


{ 
"Ave on \ 
y 


68 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


unique, its own underived contribution to the sum of 
things whereby it becomes capable of action and reac- 
tion. This element of distinctness makes the core of 
every object.? 

The failure of Determinism as an explanation of 
everything in general and of human conduct in par- 
ticular involves, of course, the acceptance of real 
Indeterminism as part of our conception of Reality. 

|The element of Indetermination at the mechanical 
level is negligible; when Life appears, it increases. 
In Man it is at its height so far as our knowledge goes. \ 
But, as we shall see when we come to consider the 
relation of history to eternity, this is not to assert 
blind chance or some gap in the rationality of the 
whole. It is impossible that things or persons should 
wholly constitute one another, so there must be a core 
of original being in whatever can be called individual— 
from a grain of sand to Shakespeare. And as new 
forms of being come into existence more fully repre- 
sentative of the principle to which all things owe their 
being, we rise further and further from such external 
determination of character and action. That princi- 
ple is, plainly, one of growth; and the forms of being 
that most fully represent it are characterized by some 
measure of self-directed growth. Just as, in the whole 
system of things, the biological and ethical stages 
could not be predicted from knowledge of physical 
and chemical nature, so in the beings who actually 
exhibit this principle it is impossible to predict their 
later character and conduct from knowledge of their 
earlier lives. There is a real self-directed growth. 


1Cf. The Nature of Personality, p. 15. 


THE NATURE OF MAN 69 


But the growth as a whole may be a rationally intel- 
ligible unit, in which all the stages fit together. The 
extent to which that happens depends on the extent 
to which Reason controls the whole life. We escape 
from the rational scheme of external determination, 
which may make a chaos of personal life, in the degree 
in which we rise to the rationality of inward self- 
direction. To that we must return; meanwhile it is 
man’s individuality, the fact that his reactions are 
not merely generic, but are his own, which is the root 
of moral responsibility. 

But it is not this which constitutes moral freedom 
in its completest sense and its most precious form. 
What is required for responsibility is that an act 
should be genuinely the act of a certain person, who 
acted as he did because he was that kind of person 
and not because he was physically compelled or mor- 
ally terrified. That is all the ‘‘freedom” required to 
make a man “ responsible’’ for his acts; it is enough 
to make him the real origin of those acts and their 
consequences. No doubt his environment has had 
a great deal to do with forming his character, and it is 
never possible to begin to separate the contribution 
due to his own distinctive being from those due to 
heredity and circumstance. But if the act expresses 
what in fact he is, then he is.responsible. No one who 
likes to use the great word “‘freedom”’ to express this 
connection between character and act can be pre- 
vented from doing so. But it is no great privilege. 
St. Paul once called it ‘‘this body of death.” ! It is 
the freedom of men to destroy themselves, most viv- 


1 Romans vii. 24. 


70 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


idly represented by Shakespeare’s tragic characters. 
“They are free, for the origin of their actions is them- 
selves; they are bound hand and foot, for from them- 
selves there is no flight.” ! 

But there is another freedom besides this; it is 
found when a man not only recognizes that an action 
is his own, but when he feels that he has truly ex- 
pressed his whole nature in it and can whole-heartedly 
rejoice init. For this freedom the absence of external 
coercion is indeed a necessary condition; but freedom 
from internal compulsion is its essence. How can 
there be such internal compulsion? and how may a 
man escape from it if it exists? The consideration of 
these questions will lead us to a more ultimate and 
radical conception of human nature. 

We have so far pictured man as an individual over 
against all other existent things, so constituted that all 
Reality may find a focusing point in his consciousness, 
and capable therefore of apprehending universal prin- 
ciples which are applicable throughout the range of 
space and time. Because he is an individual he brings 
with him an original contribution to the sum of things, 
which in part determines his reactions to the circum- 
stances in which he is placed (though how far it does 
so can be known only to omniscience); and because 
he is a unique focusing point for Reality—and in 
principle for the entire range thereof—he is of strictly 
infinite significance and value. 

Yet he does not commonly behave as one in whom 
all Being finds a focus; he commonly behaves as one 
with strictly local and contemporary interests, even 


1 Mens Creatrix, p. 144. 


THE NATURE OF MAN 71 


as one for whom the animal desires which are limited 
to the immediate present count for more than the 
spectacle of all time and all existence. This happens 
because Man’s animal Life is not yet wholly possessed 
and informed by Mind and Spirit. 

The fact is that the unity of the human soul is at 
first—and sometimes throughout life—formal only. 
It is real in certain senses; thus the various ingredients 
cannot be acting simultaneously except in combina- 
tion; a man cannot be at the same time in full pursuit 
of altruistic and egoistic aims with reference to the 
same act of choice; one or the other must give way, or 
the two must combine in a mixed product. Moreover, 
the man will only be altogether himself if he can suc- 
ceed in so organizing his nature and his activities that 
all his various capacities and impulses have scope in 
the maintenance and promotion of a life through which 
they find their expression. 

As Plato plainly saw, the ethical and the political 
problems are really the same—the production of har- 
monious unity out of a great number of diverse con- 
stituents. There is some difference of emphasis. The 
problem for the individual is to unite in one coherent 
scheme all the different tendencies of his nature— 
“out of many to become one.” The problem for 
society is to give full scope to all its citizens without 
breaking up the unity of the whole. At present our 
concern is with the individual. 

At birth he is a whole congeries of instincts, im- 
pulses, and capacities. Almost any one of these may 
be called into play by the appropriate circumstances. 
But he has besides a capacity carrying the potency of 


72 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


wonderful achievements: this is the capacity for selec- 
tive attention. What determines the selection of 
objects to which he will attend is never fully known. 
No doubt it is partly the balance of his inherited tem- 
perament; but it is here that his original endowment 
plays its greater or smaller part. The training of this 
capacity, both its strengthening and its direction, is 
the main business of all education, and is almost the 
only business of the earliest stages of education. This 
capacity to fix the attention on one object to the neg- 
lect of others is the foundation of what is called Will. 

We laugh at the physical science which explained 
heat by means of a substance called caloric, and de- 
fined caloric as that which makes bodies hot. There 
is no instance of this procedure so disastrous as its 
application to the phenomena of Choice. Choice itself 


, is a familiar fact. It has been accounted for by the 


supposition of a “faculty” of choice, called Will; and 
Will is just the faculty of choosing. But being sup- 
posed to exist, people have gone on, quite ridiculously, 
to ask—Is the Will free? This means—Has the power 
to choose got power to choose? ! The only reasonable 
questions would be either Is choice a reality? or Has 
man any power to choose? or Has mana will? Further, 
the Will, being supposed to exist, has been regarded as 
existing by itself side by side with all the other “‘facul- 
ties’’ of the soul; and those who believe in its “freedom” 
seem to imagine it as hovering over the various motives 
or inducements to action which nature or circumstance 
suggest, and arbitrarily choosing one by which it shall 


1 Cf. the celebrated chapter on “Power” in Locke’s Essay on the 
Human Understanding. 


THE NATURE OF MAN 73 


be directed. The so-called “faculty” psychology has 
survived here, at least in popular thinking, though in 
other departments it has been utterly exploded. 

But Will, conceived as the seat of Purpose, is not 
a separate faculty, except in the sense that man has 
the capacity to form a Purpose; rather it is the co- 
ordination of his whole psychic nature for action. It 
is therefore something which every one is capable of 
having, but which no one actually has in perfection. 
The degree to which Will in this sense is formed varies 
greatly from one individual to another, and a relative 
completeness is achieved at various stages. If any 
one interest is from the first predominant, unity is 
reached without great difficulty; so it is also if the 
impulses which might tend to conflict with one another 
are comparatively feeble; but in this latter case the 
resultant Will is likely to be ineffective. Where there 
are strong and volcanic passions the unification of the 
personality is far more difficult, but the result when 
attained is far more potent. ‘To the end, however, 
the Will is incomplete. The forces which modern | 
psychology describes as located in the subconscious 
regions of the soul can never be all brought into the 
harmony which is the Will. The very fact that they 
are part of the unconscious prevents this; and the 
existence of these forces renders nugatory any attempt 
to identify Will and Personality. Will is so much of 
a Personality as is consciously coérdinated for action 1 


1“The basis and character of freedom” lies “not in simple initia- 
tions but in an equipment capable of embodying extraordinarily 
delicate responses to extraordinarily varied environments” (Bosan- 
quet in Contemporary British Philosophy, p. 68). 


74 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


—the coérdination being effected by selective atten- 
tion and the pressure of environment; it can be, though 
it seldom is, the whole of conscious Personality. Yet 
because there is more in every human being than has 
come within the sphere of consciousness, Personality is 
always more than Will. 

With a view to some of the discussions which fol- 
low, we must here relate our inquiries to a method 
of speaking which has ceased to be employed by either 
philosophers or psychologists. We have used such 
terms as Nature and Personality; we have spoken of 
men and of Man. It is necessary to determine more 
precisely the significance of these terms both in them- 
selves and in relation to each other. 

In earlier times men believed in a universal Human- 
ity, which was called Human Nature, and which was 
distinguishable from all particular Persons, and could 
be rightly conceived apart from all individualization. 
Most of what makes up any human being was this Hu- 
man Nature; Personality was the distinguishing point 
whereby one individual was differentiated from an- 
other. I have heard it expressed by a scientific para- 
ble thus: Human Nature is a continuous fluid into 
which Personalities are set like drops of acid, each 
Personality forming about itself a crystal out of the 
fluid into which it comes. It is only in theology that 
this use of terms now persists, so we may turn to the- 
ology for an illustration. According to the traditional 
terminology there is in God one Nature and three 
Persons; as Will belongs to Nature and not to Per- 
son, there is in Jesus Christ one Person and two Na- 
tures; and as Will belongs to Nature and not to Per- 


THE NATURE OF MAN 75 


son, there are in Jesus Christ two Wills, one divine 
and one human.! 

Such discussions seem to most people of our time 
utterly divorced from reality; but this is only because 
habits of thought have changed, and with them the 
accepted meaning of words. The problems are still 
familiar and still important; they are the problems 
of man’s relation to God and of the individual’s rela- 
tion to society. 

First, then, we have to ask in what does the unity 
of an individual Personality consist? Does the unity 
of a Person depend on, and consist of, an organic 
relationship between the constituent elements, or 
is it some point of reference which remains fixed while 
these change? Is the Ego such a point of common 
reference or is it the living and energizing whole? 

Broadly speaking, European thought has tended 
to take the view that personal unity and identity de- 
pend on some one point of reference. Probably this is 
because the early theologians took this view, so setting 
the tradition for theology, the sphere in which this 
question has most importance. But there is another 
strand in our tradition which can be traced back to 
Plato and Aristotle. Those supreme thinkers chiefly 
approached the problem from the side of Ethics, and 
they make it clear both that there is a formal unity of 
personality from the outset and also that substantial 

1The difficulties of this position are indicated by the fact that 
Dr. Weston, the Bishop of Zanzibar, when engaged in defending 
orthodoxy, is, through his adherence to the traditional use of terms, 
brought as near to an explicit adherence to the Monothelite heresy 


as a man could well come without an avowed acceptance of it. Cf. 
The Christ and His Critics, pp. 115, 121, 125. 


76 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


unity is an achievement. The aim is &a yevéoOat €ék 
jTo\N@v)—to become one from being many.! ‘There 
is in every man a many-headed Monster (Desire), a 
Lion (Pride), and a Man (Reason); the aim of all 
education is to ally the Lion with the Man in the con- 
trol of the Monster; ? so according to Aristotle an act 
of Will is a union of thinking and desiring—vods 
dpexrixds Or dpeéts Stavonrixy; * and sins of weakness 
(a4xpacta) occur precisely because that union has not 
been effected.* In such a case we should not say that 
the Will has been overcome by a Desire, but that the 
Will did not exist, or at any rate did not perfectly 
exist. This is also the view of St. Augustine, who 
insists that the solution of the problem of moral weak- 
ness is to be found in the fact that there is no complete 
volition. If I entirely will to be good, I am good— 
not as a consequence, but because the two phrases 
mean the same thing. Consequently, when there is 
a true act of will there is no sense of struggle; the strug- 
gle, when it occurs, is the struggle of a partly formed 
will to complete itself. We may conveniently use the 
term Will as correlated to a general Purpose by which 
our life is guided, and contrast with it a Desire which 
cuts across that Purpose; it is so that we experience 
Will as a rule either in ourselves or in others, and Will 
is most of all manifest in an inability to do things con- 
trary to the character that has been and is being 
formed, in spite of desires that may be stimulated 


1 Republic, iv. 443 BE. 

2 Republic, ix. 589 A, B. 

8 Kth. Nic. iii. 1113 a 103 vi. 1139 b 4, 5. 
4 Eth. Nic. vii. 1147 a 25-b 10. 


THE NATURE OF MAN 4 


by circumstances or suggestion; ! but, if, and when, 
and in so far as, any such Desire is found to exist, the 
Purpose is not yet completely formed or accepted, and 
the Will does not yet wholly exist. 

Yet there is a real unity from the first, and we as- 
sume some measure of continuous responsibility. In- 
deed it is in connection with moral responsibility that 
this unity first becomes of practical importance. And 
it consists at the very least in the continued identity 
of the physical organism. 

But this is itself a problem. The constituent parts 
of the body are constantly changing; and its form is 
also changing. In what sense is my body now the 
same body which my mother nursed? Plainly the 
identity consists in continuity of history. Whenever 
we deal with what is alive we find this form of iden- 
tity. And it supplies the clue to the unity of person- 
ality. For some purposes we take bodily identity as 
sufficient. Thus all that the police or the judge is 
concerned about is bodily identity. If the body of the 
criminal is produced in court, it is of no use for the 
prisoner to say that he is Dr. Jekyll, while the crime 
was committed by Mr. Hyde. Personal identity is 
assumed where bodily identity is established. But 
the spiritual director cannot content himself with a 
method so rough and ready. He will indeed assume 
some degree of personal identity; he may have to at- 
tend quite as carefully to a real personal difference. 


1Of course this “inability” is objective only. Subjectively, the 
good man knows that he can sin but does not want to do so. Only 
from the objective point of view is it true to say “he can’t.” But 
this objective inability is most important. What it all comes to is 
that nothing except his own character prevents him; but that does, 


78 CHRIST THE “TRUTH 


The commission of the crime may itself create a re- 
volt in the soul of the criminal, so that while he is the 
man that did it, he is also a man who could not (being 
what he now is) do any such thing; or he may have 
subsequently undergone conversion, with the same 
result. St. Paul is to all eternity the persecutor of the 
Church as a matter of historic fact; as a matter of 
spiritual effort and sacrifice he is its foremost mission- 
ary. 

Even the Law allows for these considerations 
in dealing with children. ‘They are not regarded 
as fully responsible, partly because no one expects 
them to have fully formed wills, and partly because 
in early life the change of character may be so 
rapid. 

How, then, are we to express the unity and identity 
of personality? It must be in such a way as to recog- 
nize the variety of grades at which it may exist. First 
there is the mere numerical identity of a man with 
himself as distinct from all other persons and things. 
This appears in the consciousness of an abiding Self 
through manifold experiences. Here is the ‘‘point of 
reference.” But it is easy to misunderstand its sig- 
nificance. Philosophers, inquiring into the nature of 
self-consciousness, are liable to attribute to it the 
characteristics of their own inquiry. The ordinary 
man is conscious of himself, or is aware of his experi- 
ences in such a way as to compare them with other 
possible experiences; but this does not mean that he 
is conscious of his consciousness of himself, or aware 
of his awareness of his experiences. ‘This is a later 
stage, a product of deliberate reflection; in such reflec- 


THE NATURE OF MAN "9 


tion we distinguish between the subjective and objec- 
tive elements in self-consciousness and tend to regard 
these as separable entities, as though there might have 
been the same “‘self’’ (gud subject) with other experi- 
ences. But the self zs the self-conscious system of 
experience. If the self gud subject is abstracted from 
all its experiences, it becomes a mere possibility of 
experience and no actual entity at all. If there is no 
experience, there is no “‘self”’; if there are other expe- 
riences, there is another “‘self.”” The ease with which 
we imagine the ‘‘self”’ and its experiences to be sepa- 
rable is due to the fact that we can imagine one or an- 
other of our experiences to be changed, while we our- 
selves remained unaltered; and so we might be, for all 
practical purposes; but we should not be entirely and 
absolutely unaltered; indeed, the only reason why we 
do at times think of such changes in our experience is 
that we should be different (as e. g. happier) if the 
change were made. A change in my experience is a 
change in me; but this does not destroy my personal 
identity because this consists in continuity of growth 
and not in immutability. 

From this it follows that if the ego is regarded as 
consisting in the mere point of reference or subjectivity 
it becomes a pure abstraction denoting only the possi- 
bility of experience; it possesses no quality, no charac- 
ter; these belong to the experience which it merely 
makes possible. The ego so regarded is a focusing 
point in which nothing is focused. 

We cannot, then, find the ego, or principle of unity 
and self-hood, in any psychological point of reference 
which acts as a pivot for the experiences, active or 


Bo CHRIST THE TRUTH 


passive, of any one Person. The unit is the whole 
psychic life. This reveals itself as a unit in a variety 
of ways. 

(1) First, there is the unity of the physical organism. 
My body 1 is part of the physical universe, subject to 
its laws. But it isa relatively tademncent part, hav- 
ing a life of its own. In Bergson’s phrase, ‘‘the living 
body has been separated and closed off by Nature 
herself. It is composed of unlike parts that complete 
each other. It performs diverse functions that in- 
volve each other.””! The Ego or Self, whatever else 
may besaid about it, manifests itself through the organ- 
ism which is called its body. And this organism, just 
because it is an organism, is a single whole of many 
different parts, which passes from birth to death 
through a continuous process of change, but maintains 
throughout its identity with itself and its distinctness 
from all other objects. 

(2) Secondly, there is the unity consisting in the 
fact that of the various constituents of the psychic life, 
no two can normally be active simultaneously except 
in combination or else by a conscious division of at- 
tention; such a division is plainly a manifestation of 
a unity which holds together the two fields of atten- 
tion. A “person” may reveal one set of qualities to 
one group of acquaintances, and a quite different set 
to another; and these sets of qualities may be such as 
to prompt directly contrary types of action. But he 
cannot reveal both of these at once; if they act together 
they must coalesce. Two ‘‘persons” may act simul- 
taneously in contrary ways; one “person” may have 


1Quoted by Hoernlé, Matter Life, Mind and God, p. 95. 


THE NATURE OF MAN ~— 81 


the impulses that prompt both kinds of action, but he 
can only act in one way at one time; in choosing the 
way that he will act, which he does by fixing attention 
on the stimulus to one group of impulses, he exhibits 
the beginnings of Will, though if the other group of 
impulses remains active his will is still incompletely 
formed. Thus this first manifestation of personal 
unity points forward to the complete unity of a per- 
fectly harmonized life. 

(3) The unity of the Person also, and most funda- 
mentally, consists in the completely organized and 
harmonized self which it is capable of becoming. 
Here, as in every true instance of growth, the end 
contains the explanation of the process and declares 
its true nature. When all the divergent and even war- 
ring impulses of a richly endowed personality have 
been wrought into the harmony of a noble purpose 
devotedly pursued, there is seen the true personal 
unity which is only potential in the earlier stages of 
development and discipline. 

So a man is one person partly because his body is 
one, partly because his “soul” is a distinguishable 
group of psychic forces which can only be all active 
so far as they combine, but most of all because there is 
possible for him a unity which it is his life’s business 
to achieve. In achieving it he reveals the full nature, 
not only of his psychic endowment, but also of the 
bodily organism which is its physical basis. 

A “Person,” then, is a self-conscious and self- 
determining system of experience, and human persons 
are in process of achieving the complete unification 
of the experience which constitutes them. This “‘ex- 


82 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


perience” is itself a product of and a reaction to the 
Universe. Man tends to set himself in opposition 
to all the rest of the Universe, and of course he finds a 
ground for this in his own peculiar characteristics. 
But he is a part of it none the less and his whole being 
is rooted init. As has been already pointed out, great- 
ness of individuality does not consist in independence 
of environment, but rather in responsiveness to an 
unusually large and rich environment. For every 
“‘nerson,” just because self-conscious, is the universe 
coming to consciousness of itself (or of some part of 
itself) in a particular focus. The range of receptive- 
ness varies from one individual to another. It is in 
part, at least, determined by the physical organism. 
A deaf man can never appreciate the beauty of music. 
Some people are plainly more sensitive to various 
aspects of existence than others. Some have special 
powers of codrdinating ideas. It is seldom that the 
same person has both scientific and artistic gifts in a 
very high degree. This may be because of the con- 
formation of the brain required for these two activities 
of the spirit. Until we know far more than is known 
yet about the relations between Mind and Body, it is 
impossible to say wherein consist the conditions of 
genius, of ability, or of limitation of capacity; but 
whatever these may be, a human person is the Uni- 
verse coming to consciousness of some part or range or 
aspect of itself through the means of a specific bodily 
organism. It is for this reason that the mystic, who 
more than others experiences direct fellowship with 
the ground of his being, is more and not less aware 
than other men of his kinship with beasts and flowers 


THE NATURE OF MAN 83 


and even the products of natural forces in which life 
is not yet manifest. 

But Man is also more than this. Just because he 
is self-conscious he is no merely passive plaything of 
external forces, nor of combinations of forces within 
himself. Impulses to action must commend them- 
selves to the judgment which is itself a part of his self- 
consciousness. For this does not take the form of 
watching inertly a process independent of conscious- 
ness; to suppose that is to set up again the absolute 
opposition of subject and object which we have al- 
ready seen to be untenable. There are not two enti- 
ties—subject and object; but there is one self-conscious 
entity. Therefore what moves this must move it as 
self-conscious. And man, as self-conscious, compares 
himself as he is with himself as he might be; his self- 
consciousness is inherently judicial. Before he can 
himself be truly called the agent of any act, his judg- 
ment must have assented to it. 

Thus he is self-determining. There is not a little 
piece of him, called a Will, which determines the rest 
of him. But the system of experience which he is, 
with its misus towards the complete unification of 
itself which is very imperfectly understood until it is 
accomplished, determines his course at every stage. 
This self-determination is the activity of will, so far as 
will is yet formed, and also its development towards 
completion; it is his freedom in process of perfecting 
itself. 

At this point, if no sooner, emerges the fact of 
obligation. It has three roots. First, the fact that a 
man is the Universe coming to self-consciousness in a 


84 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


particular focus makes it essentially unnatural that he 
should pursue his own course in isolation from other 
men in whom also, as in other focz, the same universe 
is in process of coming to self-consciousness. When 
we concentrate attention on some narrowly human 
concern, such as commercial profits, we may seem to 
be rivals with no common interest; but that is to 
think meanly of ourselves. So soon as a man realizes 
the vast common background—the stellar spaces, the 
evolutionary xons, the seas and mountains, the his- 
toric movement of humanity—of which he and his 
neighbors are the product, he must realize that 
enmity is essentially unnatural. 

Secondly, as he looks forward to his own course 
of action he becomes aware of claims upon him which 
do not in any sense arise out of his individual conven- 
ience but which he recognizes as binding upon him, 
and that never so forcibly as when, in fact, he violates 
them. His exercise of freedom can only bring him 
satisfaction so far as he accepts and meets them. 

Thirdly, he finds that his own unity and peace can 
only be found in a purpose to which all his energies 
are given. But because he grows from the same stock 
as his neighbors, and is therefore social in the roots 
of his being,! the purpose to which all his energies are 
given must be a social purpose; if it is anything else 


1Of course this does not mean that he attains to fully social being 
at any point short of complete development; but from the beginning 
that is his destiny, though he may need years to learnit. ‘The devel- 
opment of personality is development into unity through ever-growing 
personal relationship.” (I owe this sentence to the Rev. L. W. Gren- 
sted.) 


THE NATURE OF MAN 85 


it will leave no place for the social impulses, and they 
will not be dedicated to it; there will still be division 
and distraction in his life; the quality of his soul im- 
poses obligation upon it. 

Thus both from the origin out of which he emerges, 
and from the goal to which he advances, and from the 
facts of his nature as he stands, there springs the 
reality of obligation. Its content must be determined 
by experience, and a man may make honest mistakes 
about what he ought to do. But to be aware that 
there is a course which he ought to take—whether he 
likes it or not, and whether it serves his interest as an 
isolated individual or not—is part of the very form 
of his self-consciousness. 

As there is no one point of reference in man’s na- 
ture which is the source of individual distinctness and 
unity, so there is no such thing as human nature 
existing by itself apart from all individualization, or 
capable of being rightly so conceived. But this does 
not mean that human beings merely exist side by side, 
or that humanity is a word denoting the mere aggre- 
gation of them. On the contrary, all the grounds of 
obligation just set out to involve the solidarity of the 
human race, and all the more so inasmuch as the most 
important and significant part of his environment to 
which a man is receptive and reactive is that part 
which consists of other human beings.! From his par- 
ents he derives the body, which is the physical basis of 


1'To the religious man God is the most important factor of environ- 
ment; and religion is the effort, by the direction given to attention, 
to make Him all-important. But this is a highly developed stage, and 
at present we are dealing with the elementary stage. 


86 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


his being; from his family—its traditions, outlook, cir- 
cumstances, hopes, fears, he derives the main direction 
of the impetus which carries him out into life; from 
his country, and his social class in that country, he 
receives the influences which either modify or stereo- 
type that direction. His whole being is a condensa- \ 
tion of society. He zs his fellow-men’s experience ‘\ 
focused in a new center. There is no impenetrable 
core of selfhood which is his, and his alone; his distinct- 
ness is his angle of vision. That is the core of selfhood © 
which, along with his own principle of self-directed © 
growth, he brings as an original contribution to the ° 
scheme of things. 

As the experience of any group of men expands, 
its content becomes more and more common to all of 
them. This does not lead to any merging of their 
individualities or separate selves in a common self; 
nothing can obliterate their past history; the route 
by which each has reached his stage of apprehension 
leaves its influence; even if all of us became omnis- 
cient, we should still be many focz of an experience 
common to all in its content, and should appreciate 
differently the values of the world that we all appre- 
hended, for appreciation depends on subjective factors 
which are themselves largely dependent on personal 
history. But though humanity exists only in individ- 
uals who are eternally distinct, it is a unity itself. It 
is a unity, because human nature exists to be the com- 
ing to self-consciousness in many centers of the one 
universe; ‘it is a unity because only in the harmony of 


TI am not here concerned with the question why the Universe 
comes to self-consciousness in many centers rather than in one. 


THE NATURE OF MAN 87 


a united human race can any one human being find 
the satisfaction of his own nature; its unity is apparent 
in the indisputable fact of influence. Again, alike 
the origin and the goal and the present fact of human 
nature demonstrates Its unity. 

It has already been said that the form of human 
self-consciousness Includes both the capacity to com- 
pare and contrast the actual state or experiences of the 
self with others that are possible though not actual, 
and the realization of absolute claims. In other words, 
it involves an apprehension of good and evil in their 
various forms, or, in one word, of Value. In the ani- 
mals this is already present, but not, as it would ap- 
pear, consciously present in such a way that an unat- 
tained, and even de facto unattainable, good may be 
conceived as a goal of ambition. A dog has a sense of 
duty, but shows scarcely any signs of a divided con- 
sciousness. In man this is fully apparent, and carries 
with it four main results: 

(a) As clearly apprehending and appreciating Value, 
man begins to bring to full actuality the Value or 
Good which is the raison Wéire of the Universe; 
through his experience it begins to find its end. 

(b) For the same reason man is capable of fellow- 
ship with God, for he can share the motive of Crea- 
tion— ‘‘ye shal] be as God, knowing good and evil.” 
_ (c) For the same reason man himself becomes crea- 
tive. Everything that can be named represents some 
original contribution to the totality of things; and 


The answer to this question is hinted at above; it is partly because 
all the values can only be appreciated if all angles of vision are taken. 
Cf. Mens Creatrix, pp. 82-86. 


88 CHRIST HE ya Ria 


this individuality increases as we rise from the purely 
mechanical, through the various forms of life, to the 
dawning self-consciousness of certain animals. But 
only in man is there the clear apprehension of Value 
which brings with it deliberate, purposive action, so 
that by his sense of Value man tries to change the 
world about him. 

(d) For the same reason also man is involved in de- 
liberate selfishness. ‘The Value which he seeks is 
focused in his own individual consciousness, and comes 
to actuality through his individual appreciation; and 
it is only with effort that he comes to learn that his 
good is essentially a part of the universal good; and 
that only by seeking and assisting the realization of 
the universal good can he find his own. Thus the 
arrival of man at full self-consciousness makes possible 
deliberate sin, makes it indeed so probable as to be 
almost certain. 

“It is very unhappy,” says Emerson, ‘‘but too late 
to be helped, the discovery we have made that we 
exist; that discovery is called the Fall of Man.” ! 
With that discovery human history begins. 


1 Essay on Experience. 


NOTE TO CHAPTER IV 
THE FALL 


THE profound wisdom of the Myth with which the 
Bible opens sets before its readers the following truths: 


(1) God made the world and saw that it was very 
good; 

(2) Man arrived at conscious realization of Value 
(Good and Evil) by doing what was in fact 
forbidden, but was (ex hypothesi) not realized 
as wrong; in breaking a rule he discovered a 
a principle; 

(3) Thereby he became a deliberate sinner; 


(4) But thereby also he became capable of fellow- ”” 


ship with God. 


This is a true analysis of all natural human progress. 
Man stumbles, by the impulse of his nature, into 
something which, by his misunderstanding of it, is 
first a source of new evils, but is the condition of a 
hitherto impossible good. 


CHAPTER V 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 


“‘T have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to 
be exercised therewith. He hath made everything beautiful in its 
time; also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot 
find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the 
end.’’—ECCLESIASTES. 


So far we have considered Man in himself; we have 
now to consider Man in action. His destiny is ful- 
filled in the achievement of two unities, unity of indi- 
vidual personality and unity of universal fellowship. 
So much has become clear from our inquiry into the 
nature of man. We have seen also how near to inevit- 
able was the failure to realize without preliminary 
error and struggle all that the form of human self- 
consciousness makes possible. Certainly that failure 
is a fact. Man was made for unity but has chosen 
division; and as each man is by his nature in large part 
a focusing point for his environment, it is not possible 
that, when once this false start has been followed by 
any, there should be others who are totally unaffected 
by it, unless indeed some power coming into human 
history from outside should make this possible. In so 
far as human history is a continuous process, where 
each stage proceeds from the one before it, there can 
be no perfecting of individuals except by the perfecting 
of the race; and as the race consists of individuals, 
and is what they make it, the outlook is gloomy 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY oI 


enough.! Some progress indeed is possible; for every 
individual is in a small degree original and creative; 
no one is utterly the prey of circumstances; and by 
pressure of experience man learns something. Human 
history is, in the main, the effort of men to achieve 
individual unity, and the grouping of men, sometimes 
conscious, more often unconscious, towards the unity 
of universal fellowship. 

At a first glance the fundamental issue of history 
seems to be a struggle between the two unities which 
we have seen to be the true goal of human life—be- 
tween liberty and order. It is true that this issue 
is at stake in a great part of history, and that the main 
conscious effort of civilization is to achieve both in a 
harmonious balance. Man’s incapacity to satisfy the 
cravings of his nature leads him to associations of 
various kinds; from the beginning the human race 
is organized in social units. There is no evidence 
whatever that Rousseau’s noble savage ever existed— 
individual, free, uncorrupt. The first effort of civiliza- 
tion is not to create a social unity, but to find room 
within the close-knit social unity for any particle of 
individual freedom. The savage is utterly bound by 
the conventions of his tribe; probably he has been 
driven by necessities of self-defense to sink his individ- 
uality in the social habits and customs of his people. 

1 Karl Marx scarcely overstates the dependence of the individual on 
his environment, though he does leave out of sight the spark of creative 
energy that is in every human soul; his error is that he misconceives 
the environment; he takes this to consist chiefly of institutions and so- 
cial organization; these are important; but far more influential are the 


individual men and women, and (if he exists) God. To trust to organi- 
zation only for reform of character is a fearful error. 


92 CHRIST THE: TRUTH 


The savage is not always fierce; he is always intensely 
conservative. In fact, one may define the savage as 
one who is hostile to new ideas or new practices as such. 
In a community of savages, some conventions will 
prove their superiority over others by the greater 
prosperity which comes to those tribes which follow 
them. These tend to conquer or absorb the less 
prosperous, and to impose their superior conventions. 
In this way great empires may grow up, which reach 
an advanced stage in the ordering of life, without ever 
grasping the idea of progress or even feeling its im- 
pulse. Such were the empires of ancient Egypt, of 
Babylonia, of Persia; such was the empire of China. 
In every one of these culture reached a high level of 
development, without any general principle of prog- 
ress; and as soon as outside circumstances gave no 
further impetus, stagnation set in. And in all of them 
there was little enough scope for individual freedom 
or originality. 

The quest of freedom first appears in ancient 
Greece—the nation which first “‘used deliberate 
reflection on past experience to modify future experi- 
ence.” + There was still no general principle of 
progress; Plato himself can only suggest a plainly 
impossible kind of revolution as the means by which 
the transition can be made from the actual society of 
his experience to the ideal society of his argument. 
But the determination to escape from tyranny is 
plain, and the purpose to establish something like 
political liberty for those inhabitants of a city who 
were fortunate enough to be “‘citizens.”’ 


1 T owe the phrase to Mr. Lionel Curtis. 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 93 


Watching the course of this purpose we see at once 
that it follows a curve. So long as there is danger 
from the foreign enemy—Persia—liberty can be 
practiced without breaking up the social unity; but 
as soon as the external pressure is removed by the 
conquest of the Persian forces on sea and on land 
the temptations to selfishness which are incident to 
liberty prove too strong; the last hundred years of 
Greek independence are a period of endless conflict, 
city against city, faction against faction. In the 
great Peloponnesian War some principles and ideals 
are involved: after that there are none; it is all an 
affair of ‘“hegemony’”’; the one motive is the desire for 
power over others and at their expense. At last order 
is restored at the cost of liberty under the Mace- 
donian conquerors. 

Rome exhibits exactly the same curve. The great- 
ness which made possible the Roman Empire was 
already declining when that empire began to exist; 
we see it in the early struggles, and above all in the 
Hannibalic War. But as soon as the pressure of 
external danger was removed the temptations to 
selfishness which are incidental to liberty began to be 
too strong; the last century of the Roman Republic 
is a period of perpetual civil war, until order is re- 
stored at the cost of liberty under the military des- 
potism of the Cesars. 

Modern European history tells much the same 
story, though here a new influence is making itself 
felt. The same tension between liberty and order is 
apparent in the early history of the United States of 
America; and though there a balance in fact was 


— 


04 CHRIST’ THE: TRUTH 


reached, it is doubtful if this could have been accom- 
plished if the new nation had been perfectly safe. 
As it was, Lincoln’s struggle had to follow upon 
Washington’s before the foundations of American 
civilization could be secure. Judged from the point 
of view we have been taking, the United States and 
the British Commonwealth of Nations are no doubt 
the culmination of human history hitherto; and if 
they can themselves be associated in a League of 
Nations which includes all civilized countries and has 
in itself the secret of permanence, this line of his- 
torical development will have reached its conclusion. 

But it may be predicted with some assurance that 
this will not happen unless other conditions are 
fulfilled, to which at present men pay little attention 
in forming their political opinions. For this first 
view of human history as consisting in the struggle 
between liberty and order and the adjustment of it 
does not take us to the roots of human conduct. We 
must go down to the elements. There are three, and 
only three, primary relations In which one human 
being, as agent, can stand to another; he may ignore 
him or compete with him or codperate with him. 
(a) So far as he lives for the satisfaction of elementary 


| desires, he is ignoring other people in the planning of 


his life; he may need them as means to his end, but 
the end is conceived in complete detachment from 
them. Such an end is sub-personal; it does not 
include any welfare for the whole self; and experience 
proves its incapacity to satisfy. (b) So far as a man 


1This is the ethical value of Plato’s analysis of the soul into 
érOvpia, Ovpds, and TO AoyioriKov. 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 95 


lives for honor, fame, power, wealth, or anything else 
in which the value is comparative, he is aiming at a 
satisfaction of his whole self, but he is involved in 
competition with others. Wealth indeed is never a 
true end; it is a means to the satisfaction of desire, or 
else to power and honor; the other ends in this cat- 
egory are those goods which cannot be enjoyed in 
common and are diminished when they are shared. 
If the former be called the life of Desire, this is the 
life of Pride. Here success is to excel; and equality 
of achievement is fatal to success. All desire for 
social precedence, for a place in the best society, for 
conspicuous ability, even for conspicuous service, is of 
this type; the success of one involves the comparative 
failure of others. All ‘‘greatness”’ as distinct from 
goodness belongs to this class.! (c) So far as a man | 
lives for an end of which the value is inherent and 
absolute he will codperate with others; there is here 
no conflict between one man’s success and his neigh- 
bor’s. If his aim is that Truth may be known (and 
not that he may himself be the discoverer), he can 
rejoice in the discovery of another as much as in his 
own. ‘These are the true social goods, because the 
search for them promotes social unity. 

The three principles of life so indicated are dis- 
coverable in every man, and they pass (as Plato has 
shown) from the character of the citizens to the order- 
ing of the state. The satisfaction of desire is necessary 
to the maintenance of life; if hunger and thirst are 
unsatisfied, the life of the individual ceases; if sexual 


1Cf. ‘Beneath the Good how far—but far above the Great’’ 
(Gray). 


96 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


desire is unsatisfied, the life of the race ceases.! De- 
sire becomes lust, and is evil, when attention is fixed, 
not on its direct object, but on the pleasure connected 
with its satisfaction. I must eat to maintain life; and 
T may as well eat what I enjoy (provided it be whole- 
some), partly because the pleasure as far as it goes is 
good, partly because enjoyment assists digestion and 
so conduces to the end for which I eat at all. ButifI 
eat, not to satisfy hunger, but for the mere pleasure 
of eating, that is wrong in principle, and the desire is 
now lust, or evil desire.” Similarly the element of 
Self-respect or Pride has its place, first in assisting the 
interest of the whole Self against particular Desires, 
which tend to seek satisfaction beyond that to which 
a harmonious economy of life entitles them, partly as 
claiming for the individual his right to live his own 
life and to find scope for the exercise of his abilities. 
But so soon as this principle becomes not only a 
demand for justice but an impulse to acquire whatever 
may be available, it becomes evil and a source of evil. 
This can never be true of the rational principle, which 
aims at absolute values, and sees the individual as 
what he is—a whole personality, but one among 
others in the community. But reasonableness, while 
always a good, is not a sufficient equipment for the 
perfectly good life; there must be the energy of desire 
and the assertiveness of Pride—both directed and 
controlled by Reason—if the full richness of human 
life is to be realized. Even the humility and forgive- 


1 This is not necessarily a disaster, as Solovyof forcibly points out. 
2 Of course the evil may be so minute as to be practically negligible; 
but the principle holds. 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 97 


ness, which are the choicest fruits of reasonableness, 
are thin and poor if there is no pride behind them; 
for a man conscious of power to accept subordination 
is a finer thing than the same act in a man who has no 
such consciousness; forgiveness is nobler in a man who 
keenly feels an injury than in one who overlooks what 
he has never deeply felt. 

We have here a psychological analogue to the 
stratification of Reality which was described in the 
first chapter. Desire (like Matter) is the indispensable 
foundation; but it does not display the purpose of: 
its own being until we see it organized by Pride and 
controlled by Reason. Similarly Pride, which cannot 
be active unless life is maintained through the satis- 
faction of desire, shows an aspect when controlled by 
Reason so different from that which it presents when 
it usurps dominion over the soul, that the name is 
usually confined to this perverted form of the quality; 
but the quality (however named) is only seen in its 
true nature where Reason takes control. And Reason 
can never take control, can hardly indeed exist, in 
a soul distracted by a chaos of desires undisciplined 
as yet by that concern for the whole self which we 
have called Pride.t Each grade exists for the sake 
of what is made possible when the higher grade 
possesses it; and each higher grade requires the lower 
for the possibility of its own existence. 

The history of mankind—the story alike of in- 
dividuals and of nations—is the working out of these 
principles in their interaction on each other. No 


1That is why the Man in us must make an ally of the Lion to 
control the Monster. 


98 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


doubt we seldom find any one of them operating in 
history quite unaffected by the others; but they are 
all at work. The various impulses of Desire alone 
will give rise to some sort of social order, for the 
desires of any one man are various, while his capacities 
are few; therefore it is obviously prudent that each 
shall exert his own capacity beyond his own needs, 
sharing the superfluous product with his neighbor 
in return for the superfluous product of that neigh- 
bor’s industry in another direction. So arises the 
barest minimum of a State.! 

Such a society must be lacking in heroic virtue, but 
it can, in principle, be quite innocent. Moreover, it 
is the indispensable economic basis of every con- 
ceivable society. But in its purity it does not exist. 
In all actual societies there is a superstructure, due to 
the activity of Pride or Reason or both. If Pride 
or Self-assertion became the sole dominating principle 
for all that goes beyond the bare minimum required 
for the maintenance of life, the result would be a state 
resting in principle (though not in history) upon the 
Social Contract of Glauco and Hobbes. Each is at 
first for himself against all others; so the “‘life of man 
is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short;”’? con- 
sequently men make a contract neither to inflict nor 
to suffer injuries,* and the State arises armed with 
authority to restrain men’s self-assertiveness against 


1 dvayKaloTaTy 7OAts, also called the city of Pigs. Plato, Republic, 
li. 369 D, 372 D. 

2 Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. I., Chap. xiii. 

savvOécOar pte adieiy pyte adixeicPa, Plato, Republic, ii. 


359 A- 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 99 


each other and with force to uphold its authority. 
That is not the history of the origin of any state, but 
it is the true analysis of every actual society so far as 
that society depends upon the existence of a police- 
force or anything resembling it. Within civilized 
states this principle is still at work, but becomes 
manifestly less fundamental as a deeper foundation 
resting on Reason grows beneath it; at present the 
relation of civilized states to one another is still 
mainly determined by Pride which, in this connec- 
tion, is usually called self-interest. 

The course of progress as the growth of the dominion 
of Reason can be traced in both the internal and 
external relations of communities. From the first, 
men live in communities. The primitive society 
allows little freedom to its citizens; but it succeeds in 
normal times in supplying them with the necessaries 
of their ‘simple life. As freedom develops it gives 
new scope to the Pride or Self-assertion to which it 
owes its own origin. As the mere existence of the 
society becomes secure against foreign attack or 
failure of supplies, there is at once less need to repress 
individual initiative and more need for an outlet for 
the aggressive impulse which had been exercised 
against enemies. So Pride, no longer exercised in 
war or crushed in peace, demands and obtains free- 
dom. At firstit abuses whatit has won. The tempta- 
tions to selfishness (which is Pride become dominant) 
are too strong for any available resistance. Society 
becomes increasingly competitive; initiative is stim- 
ulated and thus development of resources of all kinds 
is accelerated. But distribution tends to become more 


100 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


and more accidental; the question begins to be asked 
whether it may not be worse to starve as a free man 
than to be well fed as a slave or serf. The depressed 
classes then find a common interest against the 
possessing classes, and a conflict begins to arise, not 
of individuals against individuals nor of nations 
against nations, but of group against group. ‘This is 
the Class-war, announced as a fact by Adam Smith 
and proclaimed as a crusade by Marx and Engels. 

Meanwhile the freedom, which Pride creates, 
affords an opportunity to Reason; and in so far as 
men learn to care about the social goods which have 
absolute Value—Knowledge, Beauty, Fellowship— 
they find a common interest, which rests upon their 
mutual recognition as selves or persons, and therefore 
by implication does justice to what is wholesome about 
Pride. In this community of the higher goods, 
which the development of civilization makes possible, 
there is found a corrective to the class-war which is 
the necessary outcome of preoccupation with the 
purely economic sphere. As men rise to the capacity 
for caring chiefly for what unites them to one another 
rather than for what separates them from one another, 
they find a fellowship which is not attainable by means 
of any outward ordering of life, though the outward 
order must inevitably be changed as the direction of 
the citizens’ chief interest is altered. 

Still more fundamental in creating a national unity 
which underlies all class-divisions is the reénforcement 
of the primitive tribal consciousness by mutual inter- 
course continued through many generations. It has 
already been said that each man’s consciousness is a 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY IOI 


focusing-point for his environment, wherein human 
society is the most important and influential factor. 
The mutual influence of individuals is, of course, 
strongest where intercourse is closest; this is facili- 
tated by geographical neighborhood, by common 
language and common education. So long as nations 
are isolated in any degree from one another by seas 
or by hostility, divergencies which have once ap- 
peared tend to develop. In times of international 
peace the tension between the classes tends to become 
predominant, but war has hitherto always shown that 
this division is strictly subordinate to the national 
unity. It is possible that if internal conditions remain 
unaltered, a long period of peace in these days of 
rapid communications might lead to a consolidation of 
class-interests in all nations, so that the class-war 
would take the place of international war. In so far 
as the demand of class-conscious labor is for justice— 
as it largely is—the battle-cry ‘“‘ Workers of the world 
unite” is justified. But it must be noticed that 
ethically the class-unit is inferior to the national unit 
because its basis is narrower. The “class” is united 
by common economic interest only; the nation is a 
fellowship of many divers types In a common heritage 
of tradition, sentiment, and purpose covering every 
phase of human existence. ‘To substitute class for 
nation as the primary object of loyalty is ethically 
retrograde; those who advocate it, and still more 
those, who, by maintaining an unjust social order, 
cause many to tend in that direction, are the worst 
enemies of true progress. 

The same Reason, which promotes unity and 


TO2 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


fellowship within the nation by directing attention to 
the “social goods,” also insists that the nations stand 
on an equality and that to seek the interest of one at 
the cost of others is as much an intellectual blunder 
and a moral fault as to seek the interest of an individ- 
ual at the cost of others. It points therefore to an 
international organization of the world, such as the 
League of Nations, to which our consideration of the 
historic conflict between the principles of Liberty and 
Order had also led us. That it is right to work delib- 
erately for the achievement of that goal there can be no 
doubt, but in doing so we must take stock of our 
resources. 

At first sight it appears that there is in the process 
of history a power at work which will carry it to its 
destiny of a perfected civilization—the complete 
realization of the two unities at which man aims, 
personal unity and social unity, perfectly harmonized 
with one another and affording each other mutual 
support. The only question that arises on this view 
is whether our planet may not have become too cold 
to sustain life before the goal is reached. But that 
question at once raises others. First, is the goal of 
history one that is only enjoyed by those generations 
who are alive after its attainment?! And, secondly, 
is that a rational view which regards moral achieve- 
ments as ultimately dependent on astronomical or 
other purely physical processes? 

Moreover, this first view has its own difficulties. 
It is true that everywhere it presents the issue as one 


1A similar question led to one of the earliest assertions of immor- 
tality. Cf. Isaiah xxvi. 19 (with context). 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 103 


not between naked good and naked evil, but between 
higher and lower. Desire and Pride have their place 
in the perfectly good life. Pride, claiming dominion, 
is the ultimate source of all strictly spiritual evil, for 
the incursions of Desire are rebellions of the not yet 
perfectly controlled animal nature. Therefore it was 
in principle possible that the development of man’s 
life should be perfectly harmonious from its simplest 
origins to its sublime attainment. But it has not 
been so, and (as we saw) the dice were heavily loaded 
against such a contingency. All human history 
springs from the fact that man is the center of appre- 
ciation in whom the values of life come to actuality; 
and each man knows (quite rightly) that precisely his 
values can only be realized in him; therefore the very 
form of man’s self-consciousness gives an initial bias 
to self-seeking or pride, at least until experience 
proves that the welfare of the individual is part and 
parcel of the welfare of the race. But in fact the 
difficulty is greater than this. In the animal world 
there is some appreciation of value, with all the 
perversions that so easily arise from it, and the history 
is continuous from animals to men. We may illus- 
trate this by a vivid passage in which Professor Gilbert 
Murray expressed the bitterness of his soul many 
years before the Great War came to give new point to 
his words: ‘‘Consider the fowls of the air. A very 
pretty small bird, the great tit, when hungry, will 
lift up its beak, split open its brother’s head, and 
proceed to eat his brains. It might then be satisfied 
think you? Not at all! It has a moral nature, you 
must please to remember, which demands to be 


104 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


satisfied as well as the physical. When it has finished 
its brother’s brains, it first gets very angry and pecks 
the dead body; then it flies off to a tree and exults. 
What is it angry with, and why does it exult? It is 
angry with the profound wickedness of that brother 
in consequence of which it was obliged to kill him: 
it exults in the thought of its own courage, firmness, 
justice, moderation, and domestic sweetness. That 
song is its equivalent—poor innocent thing—of a 
patriotic leading article in the Kreuz Zeitung or the 
Daily Telegraph or the Petit Journal.” ! 

Perhaps the Professor personifies the tit too much. 
Perhaps a psychologist would say that there is no 
sham-morality in its conduct, but that having (to 
satisfy its hunger) done what might be also done from 
hostility, its emotions of hostility are stimulated by 
association, so that it acts as against an enemy and 
triumphs as a conqueror. But even so, who will deny 
the reality in animals of selfishness, sometimes ex- 
pressed in vicious attacks where no attack is justified, 
or of that enjoyment of power for its own sake which 
is the purest form of Pride? Man’s trouble is not 
only a sin of his race; it is, in the precise Johannine 
phrase, a ‘‘sin of the world (cosmos),”’ which comes to 
maturity in him. It is worse in him; for he knows 
another course that he might follow. He not only 
acts wrongly; but he acts wrongly with knowledge 
that his act is wrong and that nothing but himself 
prevents his acting right. Moreover, it is perfectly 


1 Gilbert Murray, Essays and Addresses, p. 163; quoted by Prof. 
W. H. Moberly in his (most admirable) paper on ‘Moral Indigna- 
tion,” read to the Oxford Philosophical Society in March 1923. 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 105 


clear that man has, in fact, not only deepened the in- 
tensity of evil already active, but has deliberately 
chosen and created further evil. He is not—nothing 
is—totally corrupt or depraved; but he is ‘‘very far 
gone”? from what was possible for him. Can he 
recover? Are the forces which we have watched at 
work in the ordinary process of history sufficient to 
carry him to his goal? 

The forces of which we have spoken are all centered 
upon self-interest. The Voluptuary is driven to 
self-respect by the discovery that in mere momentary 
pleasures there is no satisfaction. ‘The individual 
learns good citizenship by the realization that his 
welfare depends on that of his family and his country. 
Even when in war he gives his life for his country, 
there is likely to be the sense that it is for his country 
in its struggle with a country that is not his. The 
arguments which mainly lead to the League of Nations 
are grounded on the impossibility of security for any 
nation on any other ground. It is the small nations 
which actually show most concern about the League. 
There are other forces at work also; the truly dis- 
interested love of parents for children—a heritage, 
like our selfishness, from the animal world; the sim- 
ilar response of children to parents; devotion to 
righteousness for its own sake, whether in a life-time 
of service or in the death of the soldier who fights not 
chiefly for his country but for the right; the fellowship 
in all spiritual goods, Knowledge, Beauty, and Love. 
These things exist; they could become the dominant 
factors of human life; yet it seems clear that the other 
considerations which find their center in self are not 


ae 


106 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


being weakened in comparison. The higher life 
appears in occasional freaks of nature against all the 
probabilities and in defiance of all circumstances, as 
every slum parson knows; ! so it proves its own pos- 
sibility. Otherwise it exists mostly as a superstruc- 
ture, after certain elementary claims have been made 
good. Mainly our progress is the extension of the 
Social Contract according to Hobbes and Glauco, 
the agreement not to inflict or to suffer injuries; it 
is the substitution of enlightened selfishness for stupid 
selfishness. Of any emancipation from selfishness 
itself, or any attainment of perfect fellowship in 
self-surrender to the absolute good, our historic 
progress hitherto gives no promise whatsoever. 

Man needs education; but still more he needs 


' conversion. Man needs political progress and social 


reform; but still more he needs redemption; man needs 
peace and security, but still more he needs eternal life. 

The nature of Man is the chief instance hitherto 
of that stratification which is the structure of Reality; 
but his own nature and history prove that if left to 
himself he is incomplete. But inasmuch as he can 
appreciate absolute values he is ready for fellowship 
with the Highest; his completion will come when 
God indwells him. 

Before going on to consider whether or by what 
process this completion is being wrought out, we 
must pause to ask what is required to give real mean- 
ing to human history whether or not it ever comes to a 
triumphant conclusion on earth. The significance of 


1 Perhaps then it is always dependent on the forces liberated by 
religious faith, with which at present we are not dealing. 


x — E 
eS eg a 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 107 


any process may lie either in its result, or in its whole 
course, or in both. The meaning of history must lie 
partly in its result; and indeed we shall see that it 
lies mainly there, though the result may not be any 
consummation achieved on this planet. On the other 
hand if, the meaning of history lies in its result only, 
its rationality is precarious, and in any case, if this 
result is any terrestrial event, those who have died 
before the result appears are denied any share in 
that significance; and this in another way makes 
the process itself morally irrational. But if the mean- 
ing is even partly in the process itself, then it is only 
apprehensible from a point of view outside and above 
the process, whence the process can be regarded as a 
single whole. In other words, history is fully in- 
telligible only in the light of eternity. But, on the 
other hand, eternity must be conceived as requiring 
the actual historic process as part of its own content; 
for otherwise we render history unmeaning by the 
very means through which it is thought to secure its 
significance. If history exists merely in the move- 
ment of its process it is unmeaning; if, on the other 
hand, it is the temporal presentation of a self-subsist- 
ing eternal Reality, it is unmeaning. As we must 
regard history in the light of eternity, so we must 
conceive eternity in the light of history. History 
and eternity must be so conceived as to interpret each 
other. 

It must be laid down categorically that the human 
mind cannot form any adequate conception of infinity 
or eternity; we can only conceive it by means of 
analogies which are known to be inadequate. But 


108 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


even in such a survey of the course of history as we 
have attempted, we are approaching the eternal, for 
we have considered the process as a single fact and 
have tried to formulate the unchanging principles 
which govern its changes. This analogy, however, is 
inadequate in a way that we can correct; for it sug- 
gests that the eternal comprehension is of principles 
which govern change in abstraction from the changes 
which they govern; and this, we saw, is fatal, for in- 
stead of explaining history by endowing it with signifi- 
cance, it reduces history to a merely endless repetition 
of illustrations of one theme. As I have suggested 
elsewhere,! we come nearest to any real analogue to 
the eternal if we consider our own experience as we 
watch a play with which we are already familiar. We 
watch every incident in the light of its known con- 
sequences. The Greek tragedians derive the whole of 
their celebrated irony from this fact; the character in 
the play speaks or acts with an intention which the 
audience knows will be frustrated by the event. The 
process is essential; its meaning cannot be extracted 
from it and expressed in a formula; the story is the 
only expression of its meaning. Moreover, the move- 
ment of the story internally is free. Its opening does 
not necessitate its middle or end. And the Value 
of the opening and the middle is dependent on the 
end which, while they hold the field, is still not yet. 
The story of the drama is a self-determining system, 
where the parts are explained only by the whole which 
they constitute. 

To make this analogy adequate we should have to 


1 Mens Creatrix, pp. 357-61. 


EE — 


HISTORY AND ETERNITY 109 


introduce elements which by our capacity are not to 
be combined with the others. We must conceive 
the characters as literally creating their own parts as 
the play proceeds, instead of merely enacting a part 
created in advance, while none the less, eternally 
regarded, the story is a unity apprehended as such. 
This baffles our understanding; but we are baffled 
at the very point where we ought to be baffled, for it 
is at the point where the finite seeks to comprehend 
the infinite. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE NATURE OF GOD 


“The relation of the Spirit to the world is that of a lover to his 
beloved, or of a creative artist to a wild mass of unpromising material, 
out of which he is perpetually evolving, by a divine and loving art, 
the most surprising and beautiful combinations—anything but the 
relation of a power-loving potentate to his subjects, which is the very 
last thing that should be thought of in such a connection.”’—L. P. 
JACKS. 


WE have seen that Reality consists of distinguishable 
grades whose nature is such that the higher require 
the lower for their existence, but the lower require 
to be possessed by the higher in order that their whole 
potentiality may be realized.t_ We have found, further, 
that if there is in our experience any principle which 
explains the Universe as a whole, so that not only is 
it rational within itself but that its very existence is 
rational also, it is the principle of Will; but a Will 
which is thus the origin of the Universe is plainly the 
Creator, z.e. God.? 

Now Will emerges within the system of the Uni- 
verse in Man, who is the highest grade hitherto in 
the stratification of Reality, and who is first able to 
raise the question of the rationality of the Universe. 
This is natural enough, for it means that the capacity 


1 Chapter I., pp. 4-6. 2 Chapter I., pp. 7-09. 





THE NATURE OF GOD vay 


to raise the question is one aspect, while the capacity 
to answer it is another aspect, of one nature.! 

When we passed on to consider that one nature, 
we found that the Will is a completely unified activity 
of the whole nature in all its parts, so that in fact no 
human act or effort perfectly fulfills the whole ideal 
of Will; moreover, an act of pure Will is one wholly 
determined from within, as no act of a finite nature 
can ever be, for every finite nature must be itself in 
part determined by its environment.? But for the 
Will that Creates the Universe there is plainly no 
environment. It must supply entirely the grounds 
of its own action and remain independent of what it 
calls into being. 

Further, Will acts for the realization of Value. 
But the actual Value of the actual world largely con- 
sists in the process of history—the moral struggle and 
progressive effort both of individuals and communities. 
And the significance of this process, we saw, must be 
in the whole course of the process itself, that is in 
eternity conceived as the completed totality of the 
temporal. Therefore the Creative Will must be the 
active energy of a Nature enjoying in literal fact the 
spectacle of all time and all existence. 

Now, if we think of the Time-process as a whole, 
we may regard the Creation as one act, and the divine 
apprehension as one act; God’s thought externalized 
itself in His work, and His work is comprehended 


1Of course “to answer it” means to give the answer in principle, 
not to supply a detailed solution of the question as regards all particu- 
lar facts. 

2 Chapter IT. 


112 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


in His thought. Into the experience of that omniscient 
comprehension it is not possible for us to enter. From 
the nature of the case, only omniscience can know 
what omniscience feels like. For every mind that is 
not all-comprehending is conditioned throughout its 
experience by its limitations; and in principle this 
remains true however widely the limits are extended. 
Infinity is not a very big finite; it is always something 
more, and, still more, something other. We have 
enough of knowledge to know that our knowledge is 
limited and that an all-comprehensive Mind is in 
principle possible; into the experience of such a mind 
we cannot enter at all. Before the awful sublimity 
of absolute Godhead, man can only adore in wonder- 
ing humility.! 

Now if God does not apprehend the historic process 
as a process, then either that process has no mean- 
ing, which we saw to be unreasonable, or else there 
is some significance in creation which evades the 
omniscience of the Creator, which is absurd. There- 
fore we must suppose that He apprehends the process 
not only as a block in its completeness, but as a move- 
ment in its changes. But what He thus apprehends 
is the creation of His own Will. Consequently it is 
reasonable to hold that God Himself is active in the 
process itself. Indeed, this seems to be necessary. 
For our view is not that God once made the world, 
and thereafter watched and watches its course, but 
that its course is itself the object of His creative Will 


1 Here assuredly we confront Otto’s Mysterium Tremendum— 
something which to us is “‘wholly other,” with a remoteness which 
our partial apprehension only serves to emphasize. 


THE NATURE OF GOD 113 


and comprehending Mind. Hence it is necessary 
that just as He contemplates His own act in History 
as a whole, so in that same History as a process He 
is enacting that which eternally He creates and con- 
templates. 

And this rather highly abstract argument finds 
support in a department of human experience on 
which hitherto no part of our argument has rested, 
though we have attempted some account of its nature, 
—religious experience. This form of experience is, 
to the religious man, as much its own witness as is 
the experience of sight or hearing, of enjoying or 
knowing. But it is no more explicable to the ir- 
religious man than color is to the blind man. More- 
over, it involves, as sense experience does not, a 
special kind of philosophy. Consequently in this 
department as in no other the validity of experience is 
challenged. But it is as real as any other form of 
experience,! and the fact that it supports, and finds 
support in, the general course of our argument is 
evidence for both; indeed the strongest intellectual 
foundation for theism is, as was said earlier, neither 
purely philosophic argument in itself nor purely 
religious experience in itself, but the coincidence of 
these two. We have seen that on the side of Knowl- 
edge there can be no complete fellowship of man 
with God, if by knowledge we mean intellectual grasp 
of an articulated system of fact: here man is subject 


1 See Chapter ITI., where, it will be remembered, the apprehension 
of absolute value is regarded as the primary form of religious experi- 
ence. I should maintain that absolute value (when apprehended as 
such) always has the character described by Otto as Numinous. 


114 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


to limitation and all his experience is relative. But 
in another direction man reaches a true finality—he 
can appreciate absolute Value. 

We have already seen that man has actual fruition 
of absolute Beauty and Goodness, such as he cannot 
have of absolute truth except in so restricted a sphere 
as only to indicate what the apprehension of absolute 
Truth would be. But it is not on this for the moment 
that the argument rests. Man appreciates absolute 
Value mainly through the sense of absolute obligation 
which it imposes, and this is as real in relation to 
Truth as it is in relation to Beauty and Goodness. 
And it is through this chiefly that man first actually 
experiences God. For if there is an absolute obliga- 
tion, and if there is a Will on whose act all existence 
depends, then that obligation must be the injunction 
of that Will; just as, taking another point of view, 
if there is a Creative Will, the end of its action must 
be absolute Value. Therefore to be conscious of 
absolute Value is already to be in some form of inter- 
course with God;? and this form of intercourse with 
God comes to every human being.® 

This religious experience in its more developed 
form is emphatic in its witness in two directions. 
First, it is emphatic in its witness that God genuinely 
cares what men do. Even if we suppose that God is 
not only the Creator but also the perpetual energizer 
of the world and its history, we might still suppose that 
He is Himself unmoved by its occurrences—though 
if we think out to the end the implications of such a 


1 See Chapter II. 2 Cf. Genesis iii. 5. 
3 Cf. Chapters IT. and III. 


THE NATURE OF GOD II5 


divine Apathy we shall find that it makes the act of 
creation irrational.1_ Men have shrunk from the 
belief that the Almighty is really concerned about the 
doings of men. Probably this is due to a radically 
false estimate of greatness and of the relative impor- 
tance of things; 1f man is spiritual and the stars are not, 
then God is vastly more concerned about the selfish- 
ness of a child than about the wreck of a solar system. 
Anyhow, the witness of religious experience is over- 
whelming. All those who have such experiénce of 
fellowship with God as commends itself to the con- 
science of other men as genuine, agree in depicting 
God as at once exalted above all the tumult and 
anxiety of life, and also suffering grief and indignation 
at the conduct of man. ‘‘Thus saith the high and 
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is 
Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him 
also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive 
the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of 
the contrite ones. For I will not contend for ever, 
neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should 
fail before me, and the souls which I have made. 
For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and 
smote him, I hid my face and was wroth: and he went 
on frowardly in the way of his heart.” ‘And now, 
O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, 
I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What 
could have been done more to my vineyard, that I 


1A parallel difficulty besets the characteristically Greek concep- 
tions of God; cf. the God of Aristotle, who, just because His knowl- 
edge is perfect is wholly unaware of the very existence of this imper- 
fect world! 


L1G) | CHRIST THE TRUTH 


have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it 
should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild 
grapes?” ! These utterances, though separated by a 
century and a half in their composition, reflect a 
similar experience of God; they are characteristic of 
the higher religious experience, as distinct from philo- 
sophic speculation, in all ages. 

Secondly, religious experience is emphatic in its 
witness to a positive activity of God in history, and 
that in two forms. It asserts an activity of God 
within the souls of those who in any degree try to 
serve Him, so that they become aware of His presence 
urging, sustaining, and pressing them forwards. 
“The Spirit helpeth our infirmity: for we know not 
how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself 
maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot 
be uttered”:? that is plainly a record of frequently 
experienced fact; and most religious people have an 
experience which, though less vivid, is similar in kind. 
But religious experience also asserts the action of 
God’s Providence in History. This often appears 
in small things, which any one who likes can describe 
as mere coincidence—meaning (I suppose) that the 
concurrent events are each and all the blind product 
of unknown causal processes. But experience enables 
us to say that by the ‘‘method of concomitant varia- 


1 Tsaiah lvii. 15-17; v. 3, 4. No doubt this form of religious ex- 
perience is most typical of Hebrew religion; but in the Greek religion 
it is present, and even in Hinduism and its daughters, though there 
the philosophic doctrine has so depreciated it as to reduce it to a 
minimum. 

2 Romans viii. 26. 


THE NATURE OF GOD era 


tions”’ we are entitled to affirm a causal connection 
between the cultivation of the devotional life and the 
events which surprise us by their apposite occurrence. 
Nor, if we believe in God at all, is this surprising; if 
we are sensitive to the divine influence and responsive 
to the divine will it is natural and even probable that 
we should become instrumental to the divine purpose 
even beyond our knowledge of it.! 

A further extension of this experience is also natural 
and probable. The fact of men’s influence upon one 
another is unquestioned; and if so, intercessory prayer 
may be expected to be powerful for influencing the 
conduct and character of men, as experience seems 
beyond all reasonable doubt to show that it does. 

But one part of the witness of religious experience 
is vehemently challenged; for it claims to find in 
historic occurrences an activity of God over and above 
the influencing of the human spirit. This appears 
both in the ‘‘raising up” of men to do certain work 
needed for the accomplishment of the providential 
purpose, and also in the occurrence of natural con- 
vulsions or other phenomena in the physical world. 
Yet the testimony is clear. If Isaiah was wrong in 
regarding the destruction of Sennacherib’s army by 
plague as due to divine activity, it is very hard to 
attribute any authority to his view of life at all; 
for if history is not subordinate to the divine will in 
such a way as to make possible that interpretation of 
that event, then not only is he mistaken here or there 
in his understanding of God’s will, but the whole 
orientation of his thought is false. 

1 Cf, Chapter XI., specially pp. 195-196. 


118 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


The objection to this view of things is twofold.? 
First, it is objected that, while human conduct may 
be self-determined in such a way as to leave room 
for real contingency, physical nature is governed by 
invariable laws (or, to be more accurate, displays 
invariable uniformity) so that if God intervenes in 
the way suggested He contradicts the principle of 
His own creative act. But it is impossible to ‘“‘cut 
the universe in two with a hatchet” in this way. The 
object of the creative act is the whole universe, in 
which man is a part, and (as we have seen) the part 
which most fully reveals the principle of the whole. 
Moreover, if there is indeterminism in the conduct of 
man, it affects all else. If I throw a stone or a cricket- 
ball, or if I walk across the room, I affect the move- 
ment of the earth in relation to its own center of 
gravity. The fact that the amount of difference 
which I can make is too minute to be measured or 
taken into calculation does not affect the principle. 
The position of the earth in the stellar system and its 
own rotation are not fixed unalterably by the laws of 
motion; they are also affected (though not appreciably) 
by the variable action of human wills. No argument 
can be drawn from the “laws” of the physical world 
to discredit the notion of such divine activity in that 
world as will seem to us to be “‘intervention.”’ 

The other objection to such a belief depends on the 
view that it is inconsistent with the divine constancy. 
God is immutable, for if He changes it must be to 

1T omit the objection that God cannot will physical calamities, as 


I must return to that whole class of considerations later (see Chap- 
ters X. and XI.). 


THE NATURE OF GOD 119 


something other than perfection; and that, being 
perfect, He cannot will, nor can He change except by 
His own will. But it is characteristic of Purpose that, 
while constant in itself, it prompts diversity of actions 
according to the circumstances in which the purpose 
is from time to time to be fulfilled. If, then, there is 
any element of indeterminism in human conduct, we 
shall expect to find a perpetual adaptation of the 
divine activity to meet the varied circumstances 
created by man’s free conduct. The Will is un- 
swerving, the Purpose unchanged; but the very 
constancy of the fulfillment of the one purpose requires 
variations in the method of activity, if the other con- 
ditions of the activity are variable. 

This is a point of first-rate importance. If the 
unifying principle of the Universe is not a system of 
intellectual principles but an active Will, this provides 
for elasticity in the unifying principle itself. We can 
easily imagine a great statesman, whose aim is to weld 
a congeries of conflicting clans into a harmonious 
unity. At first he may insist on a strong centralized 
government, to the indignation of ‘‘Liberals.”’ Later, 
when appreciation of common interests has become 
established, he may follow a policy of devolution, to 
the horror of ‘‘Tories.”” Smaller men will call him 
inconsistent. But he may be taking at each stage 
the next step in the fulfillment of a constant purpose. 
Purpose exhibits its own unity in the adaptations to 
changing conditions of which it is capable. We 
should therefore antecedently expect, what religious 
experience is found to affirm, that God not only con- 
trols all the world by the laws of its own being, in- 


120 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


herent in its elements by His creative act, but that as 
He made it for the realization of certain values, so in 
pursuit of those values He acts directly upon its course 
as occasion in His all-seeing judgment may require. 

Now in the corresponding activity of men we find 
a suggestive parallel. Just in the degree in which a 
man achieves that unity of personal life which is the 
completion of Will in him, he reveals himself in some 
of his activities more than in others. A great part 
of his life—far the greatest in the mere ‘‘clock-time” 
which it occupies—is covered by a routine which he 
has partly accepted and partly constructed, and which 
tells his neighbors very little about him. The attempt 
to interest a company by the story of how the great 
Duke of Wellington used to eat figs was a failure: 
“ait turned out to be the ordinary way, quadrisection 
down the stalk and then four licks.’”’! There are, 
however, events which show that the Duke could 
react to circumstances by methods not at all familiar, 
such as the tactics of Salamanca or the carrying of 
Catholic Emancipation; and it is these which reveal 
the real man. Two brothers may grow up side by 
side, sharing the same education and following the 
same routine; their friends may come to think of 
them as exactly alike; then some sudden emergency 
may arise, and the two react to it in utterly different 
ways, which are yet both quite consistent with all that 
had previously been made known of their characters. 
So a man sometimes acts in such a way that even 
those who have known him well exclaim, “I never 
knew he had it in him.’”’ The whole of a man’s con- 


1 Beeching, Pages from a Private Diary, p. 258. 


THE NATURE OF GOD T2I 


duct is expressive of his character and purpose in 
some degree, but these exceptional acts are the true 
revelation of him. 

So it may be with God Himself. The routine of 
nature manifests His Will; but there may come oc- 
casions where action of a special and specially char- 
acteristic quality is required and the action so taken 
may be in an especial degree revealing; such acts 
are commonly called miracles. 

We reach, then, a conception of God as at once 
comprehending the entirety of things in the whole 
range of space and of time, and also as constantly at 
work within the process of His own creation, shaping 
it as a master-artist till in its completeness—not its 
result only but its whole course—He finds the good 
for which He made it. As He so works, He follows 
for the most part the routine that is apparent to us as 
the uniformity of nature; but there are also occasions 
when His own constancy requires that in face of special 
emergencies He should act in an exceptional way; such 
action will be in a special measure a revelation. 

He made the world for its value; this comes to actual- 
ization in man, and for what man can give Him—loyalty 
and obedience and even love—He cares more than for 
the splendor of starry heavens or the delicacy of insects’ 
wings. But man, through his very sense of value, has 
chosen a way which 1s not God’s to pursue his own good. 
The evil or sin of the world—in any case a problem wor- 
thy of divine solution—culminates in the self-will of 
man, in whom most of all, hitherto at least, the joy of 
creation was to be sought. Here is an emergency 
sufficient if any could be for a special and specially 
revealing act. 


) ‘ ‘ 
Nereis ie 


‘ fos 
ay bay re Cede Re 
Lm LP AK ysis :3 





PART III 


THE CORE OF THE ARGUMENT 


of 





CHAPTER VII 
THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST 


“Or Lord is tue crown, nay, the very substance of all Revelation. 

SUPPOS€u ~.---ince the soul, no other can. The believer stakes all 
what was kn, ~ hope on His power. If the man of science would 
any in past timc. aakes believers so sure of what they hold, he 
mubt _- ~allyenh @ heart the Jesus of the Gospels; if the believer 
seeks to keep 7 steady in the presence of so many and some- 
times so violent s...11s of disputation, he will read of, ponder on, pray 
to, the Lord Jesus Christ.”—ArcHBISHOP TEMPLE. ; 


WE have been led by the argument to a view of the 
universe which requires for its confirmation a divine 
act in the midst of history. We have found that God 
is such as to act in a special way if occasion demand; 
we have found an occasion which demands such an 
act. If there is no such act, we must either compose 
ourselves to await it as the Jews were taught to await 
the coming of the Christ, or else we must abandon 
our whole view of life and the world. 

But there is record of a divine act such as the need 
requires. It is the story of the Birth, Life, Death, 
Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
the consequent coming of the Holy Spirit. 

For this act the record tells of long preparation, 
and we can trace the same preparation at work beyond 
the record. We see how the gift of Law, which ancient 
Rome brought to the world, and the peace which 
she imposed, provided an arena for the proclamation 
of the divine act. We see how the gift of Philosophy, 


126 CERRIS Tre DI Ue. 


which ancient Greece had brought, provided a means 
of formulating and so handing on the significance of 
the divine act. We read in the record how by special 
experiences, both spiritual and external, a people had 
been prepared to witness the divine act. But the 
act in which all this finds its pivot is the Incarnation. 

We see One who was born by no activity of human 
will, but only by the acquiescence of the Virgin- 
Mother in the divine Will; who called men to such a 
dependence on and fellowship with God as had newer 
been conceived, yet lived always as one who Himself 
experienced what He taught; who died at the hands 
of those He called to share His blessedness, and in the 
very hour of His anguish prayed for their forgiveness; 
who rose bodily from the grave, and closed His ap- 
pearances to His disciples by the enacted parable 
of His Ascension from the mountain whereon they 
stood till He was enveloped in the cloud of the divine 
glory. 

He was not understood all at once even by those 
who became His most intimate disciples. If our 
faith in the revelation of God thus given and in the 
God thus revealed is to be a reasonable faith, we must 
trace the process whereby they reached that degree 
of understanding which made it possible to formulate, 
to propagate, and to trust the convictions embodied 
in the Christian Creed. From this we may expect 
to learn both the empirical basis of our faith, and also 
the process by which God leads men to the under- 
standing of His supremely chai-cteristic act and 





‘THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST — 127 


their Master as a man; yet from the first there was 
in Him something mysterious which was the starting- 
point for a fuller apprehension. ‘There were strange 
sayings uttered by John the Baptist which had attrib- 
uted to Him such powers as a man could hardly 
exercise. His teaching had both a graciousness and 
an authority that seemed hard to reconcile with His 
supposed origin. His wonderful works exceeded 
what was known of contemporaries or recorded of 
any in past times except the greatest. After a period 
of specially close intercourse with Him they were 
ready to follow St. Peter in acknowledging Him as 
the promised Messiah. But this is still far short of 
a confession of His Diety. In our day many people 
identify the terms super-human and divine. They 
think that if in our Lord besides humanity there was 
something more than humanity, that something must 
be divinity. But this is quite a baseless assumption, 
and the Jews did not make it. What from the scene 
at Caesarea Philippi onwards the Apostles certainly 
believed is that their Master was more than human in 
the sense in which we are human. The Messiah was 
at that date conceived as a super-human and celestial 
Being, who might properly be spoken of as in a pecul- 
iar sense the Son of God; but he was not conceived 
as divine in such a fashion as would lead to His being 
spoken of as God the Son. The Fourth Gospel, 
which I believe to be the work of John the son of 
Zebedee, and quite certainly to rest at least on the 
memory of the ‘‘beloved disciple”? who was an eye- 
witness of what he narrated, records an exclamation 
of devotion by St. Thomas after the Resurrection 


128 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


which contains the whole Christian doctrine, but this 
remains an isolated utterance, and the theology im- 
plied by it was not yet intellectually grasped. If the 
Apostles reflected at the time on the saying “‘I and 
the Father are one” they would remember that He 
justified that saying by a reference to the Psalm 
where those to whom the word of the Lord came are 
dignified with the divine title. He claimed to be the 
revelation of God, but the disciples who heard Him 
say ‘“‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” 
only reached, before the Passion at any rate, the con- 
fession that He was one sent by God.! Our Lord’s 
language did not necessarily imply that He claimed 
to be Himself Jehovah. And if it had, we can see that 
it could only have baffled and perplexed their minds. 
They were Jews with all the Old Testament behind 
them; it needed more than a verbal claim to persuade 
them to ascribe to a man divine honors. 

This is still the doctrinal situation in the first days 
after Pentecost. In the speeches of St. Peter in 
Acts i. v, there is still no suggestion that Jesus, the 
prophet of Nazareth, is identified in the speaker’s 
mind with the God of Israel. He is the anointed— 
the Christ—of God; He is exalted to be a Prince and 
a Saviour; but He is not presented as Hmmself God. 

This is still true of St. Stephen; but here we see 
a change beginning. St. Stephen is not only the 
first martyr, but the first Christian of whose death we 
have any record. The vision of Jesus at the right 
hand of God does not necessarily carry us beyond the 
celestial Messiah of contemporary apocalyptic litera- 


1St. John xvi. 30. 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST 1209 


ture. But the words which follow imply something 
more than that: ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 
Every Jew knew the words of Psalm xxxi. which our 
Lord Himself had uttered on the Cross, though by 
adding the word “Father” He had given them a new 
note of intimacy: ‘‘Father, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit.”” But here the first Christian to die 
commends his spirit to Jesus. It is a devotional, not 
a dogmatic utterance; but its implications will need 
a whole theology to state them. It is a devotional 
equation of Jesus with the God of the spirits of ail 
flesh. It is characteristic of the growth of Christian 
theology that religious experience should precede 
dogmatic formula. Indeed it is just because of this 
that Christian theology is a veritable science. 

It was St. Stephen, and the movement with which 
he was associated, who freed Christianity from the 
limitations of Judaism. It is scarcely possible to 
doubt that St. Stephen was the chief human agent in 
the conversion of St. Paul. Certainly the form of 
Christianity to which St. Paul was converted was 
that for preaching which St. Stephen had been stoned. 
But at first his doctrinal position is not distinguishable 
from that of St. Peter’s early sermons. We must 
remember, however, that the spiritual antecedents 
are different. St. Peter had been with the Lord in 
His earthly ministry; he had walked with Him in the 


1Cf. Rackham on The Acts of the Apostles (one of the Westminster 
Commentaries), pp. Ixxi—lxxiv. The priority of life to doctrine is 
here very emphatically set forth, and the list of passages of p. lxxii. 
where our Lord’s Deity is plainly implied but as plainly noé stated is 
most impressive. 


130 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


corn-fields; he had sat with Him in the boat upon the 
lake; he had supped with Him among His friends. 
For him the risen and ascended Christ is chiefly the 
Man whom God exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour. 
St. Paul had probably never seen the Lord till on the 
Damascus road his eyes were blinded by the dazzling 
light and he heard the voice which said: “I am Jesus 
whom thou persecutest.’”’ For him the Christ who 
died upon the Cross is first and foremost the celestial 
Messiah, who even in the earliest epistles is associated 
with God in the opening greetings as a source of grace 
and peace. 

Here, too, experience comes first. There is the 
experience of the conversion itself; following on that 
comes the realization of reconciliation to God by 
fellowship with Christ; resultant from that comes the 
apprehension that in Christ is found the explanation 
of history because He is the revelation of the Father’s 
will and the agent of its fulfillment. It would be 
impossible to construct a theological system which 
should do justice to all the elements in St. Paul’s 
religious experience without affirming the Deity of 
Christ. But St. Paul, though a man of supreme 
intellectual penetration and grasp, was not in his 
Epistles writing systematic theology. It was never 
his primary concern to give an intellectually satisfying 
account of his whole religious experience and convic- 
tion; and it is not quite certain that he ever used the 
word “‘God” as a title of Jesus Christ. But he often 
comes so near to it that it is only for purposes of 
almost pedantic accuracy that we can distinguish 
between what he does say and such an explicit con- 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST 131 


fession. He says that “in Christ dwelleth all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily’; he says that Christ 
existed before the Incarnation “in the form of God”’; 
he says that Christ is ‘‘the image of the invisible 
God’”’; he says that “‘God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto Himself.’ Only the Trinitarian position 
can theologically do justice to such expressions. But 
it is true that he seldom, and perhaps never, said in so 
many words that Jesus Christ is God. The punctua- 
tion of Romans ix. 5 is doubtful; the reading (as well 
as the authorship) is doubtful in 1 Timothy iii. 16; and 
the doubt affects the very question at issue. 
Personally I am quite convinced that on some 
occasions at least the word ‘“‘Lord’’—Kipios—as 
applied by St. Paul to Jesus Christ is to be interpreted 
as meaning an identification with Jehovah. It is only 
possible to escape from this interpretation, and from 
the Trinitarian implications of the phrases already 
quoted, by a series of unnatural interpretations. But 
. those interpretations are not absolutely impossible, 
and if we are being scrupulously exact we cannot say 
that beyond all doubt St. Paul identified Jesus of 
Nazareth with the God of Israel, though we are’ 
entitled to say that the alternative view, involving a 
frequent strain upon language, can hardly be correct. 
After all, the familiar words with which 1 Corinthians 
closes—‘‘ The grace of our Lord . . .,” etc., especially 
when we pay attention to the order of the phrases, 
cannot be accounted for by any theory which does not 
attribute to Jesus Christ the dignity of God Himself. - 
In short, I am entirely convinced that St. Paul fully 
believed in the Deity of our Lord; it is certain that, 


132 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


even if he had not formulated this belief to himself, 
his faith can only be articulated by Trinitarian theol- 
ogy; but this faith is usually expressed by him in 
the language of spiritual function and experience, not 
usually, and just possibly never, in a specific theolog- 
ical declaration. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews exalts Christ above 
the angels, and attributes His preéminence to His 
inheritance as Son of God. Possibly the quotation 
from Psalm xlv. in chapter 1. verse 8 is intended as 
an attribution of Deity to the Son, but here too there 
is a doubt about the interpretation. St. Paul and 
this author hold a religious position which absolutely 
necessitates the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ, 
and far the most natural interpretation of their lan- 
guage maintains that they themselves accepted and 
affirmed this doctrine. But it is not possible to say 
with absolute certainty that they did so. And indeed 
if the doctrine of our Lord’s Godhead had been 
specifically affirmed in very many of the New Testa- 
ment scriptures, the Arian controversy could never 
have arisen within the Church. The phrase “Athan- 
asius contra mundum” reminds us that the great 
upholder of what we now rightly regard as the central 
and fundamental article of the Christian faith was for 
a time in a minority even among his brother bishops; 
and this would not have been possible at all if many 
of the Apostolic writings had been fully explicit. 

And yet some of them are surely explicit. It is 
impossible to doubt the doctrine of the Johannine 
books. In the Apocalypse the association of the 
heavenly Christ with the Eternal and Almighty 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST _133 


Father is so close that no doctrine short of the affirma- 
tion of His Deity can be said to express it; and in 
Xxil. 13 the Christ is represented as claiming in His 
own Person the most supremely distinctive title of 
Almighty God, which the Almighty had used of Him- 
self ini. 8. But the whole book intervenes. Christ is 
revealed as God through the seer’s experience of His 
exercise of divine functions, and only then is He 
presented as Himself the Almighty God. 

In the Johannine Gospel and General Epistle the 
position is at last explicit and is stated from the outset. 
He who tabernacled among men under the name of 
Jesus is the eternal Word of God, Himself God, the 
Agent of creation. To be “in Him that is true”’ is 
the same thing as to be ‘“‘in His Son, Jesus Christ.” 1 
And of this God, who is one with Jesus Christ, it is 
said: ‘‘This is the true God and eternal life.” Every 
supposed god except this God is an idol. 

What is the upshot of this rapid survey of the New 
Testament scriptures? It is that our faith in the 
Godhead of Jesus Christ does not rest chiefly on any 
single text or group of texts; it is a faith to which 
men found themselves irresistibly impelled by their 
growing spiritual experience as in the fellowship of 
the Holy Ghost they more and more deeply appre- 
hended the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the 
love of God. We have not here a perplexing dogma 
imposed by authority upon men’s reluctant minds; 
what we have is a triumphant discovery based on 
experience as all scientific truth must be based. They 
use religious and devotional language which com- 


17 John v. 20. 


134 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


pletely implies the doctrine of the Godhead of Jesus 
Christ before they state that doctrine in set terms. 
The experience comes first; the formulation comes 
later. That is a spiritual law, and our Lord always 
observed it. If He had made a claim of Deity in 
absolutely unmistakable terms, He would have fallen 
under His own saying, “If I honor myself, my honor 
is nothing,” and He would have put mere intellectual 
apprehension before spiritual realization. And even 
so He would have hindered, not helped, intellectual 
apprehension. If standing before them in the flesh 
He had said to those devout Jews “‘I am God,” He 
would have reduced them to mere bewilderment. 
Therefore, though the claim is there, as we shall see 
later, its verbal expression is always so interwoven 
with the spiritual activity that it did not at first 
challenge the critical or merely intellectual under- 
standing of the disciples.1 To this topic we must 
return. For the moment it is enough to say that an 
unquestionable declaration by our Lord would have 
largely robbed faith of its spiritual value. If St. 
Peter had proclaimed his Master as God directly 
after Pentecost, his authority would no doubt have 
weighed greatly with later disciples of the same 
Master. But far more weighty and cogent than any 
such impulsive declaration is the process that we 
actually see going on in the experience of the Apostles 


1 Cf. Gore, Belief in Christ, p.68. ‘We can conceive nothing further 
from the method of Jesus than that He should have startled and 
shocked their consciences by proclaiming Himself as God. But He 
had done something which in the long run would make any other 
estimate of Him hardly possible.” 


a 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST _135 


and of the infant Church. At every stage the same 
principle is at work. Men trust and find themselves 
“‘justified’’ (to use St. Paul’s favorite word) in trust- 
ing; as they trust more deeply the vindication becomes 
more complete. They become aware that Jesus 
Christ does what only God can do. The functions 
which He discharges are functions of God.! 

Now functions, that is actions and reactions, are all 
we know. If Jesus Christ performs the acts of God, 
then Jesus Christ is God in the only sense in which 
any name can justifiably be attributed to any object. 
The method by which in the New Testament the 
supreme affirmation is reached is the only method 
by which any such affirmation could be scientifically 
justified. | 

There are some who feel that, if the full and con- 
scious belief in our Lord’s Deity was reached by 
such a process lasting through half a century or more, 
it may have been the product of a sort of self-hyp- 
notism. The early believers would tend to exalt 
their Lord, and the process continued until they had 
set Him on the throne of the universe. But this 
objection ignores the actual conditions. Greeks might 
deify Heracles; Romans might deify the Caesars; 
because for them deification only meant admission to 
a Pantheon which contained a large number of other 
deities, each of them quite finite, with certain known 
interests and even with certain known defects. But 


1'This comes near to the familiar notion that Christ has the value 
of God, which is often contrasted with the doctrine that Christ 7s God. 
This contrast is indefensible. He cannot really have the value of 
God unless He is God. 


136 CHRIST, THESTRULE 


the Apostles were Jews. For them to acclaim their 
Master as God was to recognize in their Friend the 
One Eternal and Almighty God. They did not say 
that He was one among other gods, as each of us is 
one among other men. They learned to see in their 
Friend and Master the One Almighty, the One Eter- 
nal, the One Uncreated, the One Incomprehensible. 
There was not, and there could not be, the smallest 
natural tendency to such a result. The recognition of 
Him as Messiah would make the result itself not 
easier, but more difficult, for Jehovah and the Messiah 
were in Jewish thought two Beings and not one. 
Therefore long before the doctrine is actually affirmed 
we find the experience on which it rests. Before 
the last journey to Jerusalem the Apostles already 
regarded their Lord as superhuman. From St. 
Stephen’s martyrdom onwards we find a realization 
of His relation to men’s souls, which involves His 
Deity. St. Paul uses phrases which are only just 
short of the formal assertion of His Deity, and prob- 
ably did formally assert it on one occasion at least,? 
while on others he identifies Jesus Christ with Jehovah 
by his use of the title ‘‘Lord.”’ When St. John pro- 
claims the doctrine in explicit language, he has added 
nothing of substance to what was already there; he 
has only formulated it. It is of supreme importance 
to notice that St. Paul’s exalted Christology aroused 
no opposition. There were many who were ready to 
oppose him, but none chose this point for their attack. 
This means quite plainly that his doctrine was recog- 
nized as only giving form to what was already im- 


1 Romans ix. 5. 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST 137 


plicit in the faith of the first Christians.!_ The doctrine 
is truly a formulation of experience. 

But it is also inevitably more than that. The 
belief in the Godhead of Jesus Christ is not the mere 
identification of Jesus with Jehovah as known to the 
writers of the Old Testament. Rather it is the en- 
largement and enrichment of the thought of God by 
the necessity of making room within it for what men 
had learned concerning God through the teaching, and 
still more through the Life, Death, and Resurrection 
of Jesus Christ. To this modification of the thought 
of God we must now turn, though the fuller treatment 
of it must be reserved to a later stage in the argument.’ 

The fundamental note in the Jewish conception of 
God was Unity. The dogma “The Lord our God, 
the Lord is One,” does not mean merely that as a 
matter of fact there is no other Being who may fitly 
be called God. It rests on the fact that the divine 
attributes are such as to exclude plurality. There 
cannot be two All-rulers. Polytheism has always to 
allocate different spheres or departments to its various 
deities. When once God has been conceived as the 
Almighty or All-ruler, the bare notion of a multi- 
plicity of gods becomes impossible. It was natural 
and even necessary that this unity should at first be 
apprehended in its pure simplicity, free from any 
thought of distinctions within it. But as soon as men 
had learned to see God in Jesus Christ problems arose 
to which the doctrine of the Trinity offers, not indeed 
a solution, but a formula of elucidation. 

1Cf. Gore, Belief in Christ, p. 91. 

2See Chapters X. and XIII. 


138 CHRIST THE: TRUTH 


God is known as All-ruler; Jesus was limited in 
His action by the response that He could evoke. 
God is known as the All-knowing; Jesus experienced 
disappointment. If Jesus is God, then there are in 
the very Being of God elements which could not be 
combined in the experience of any one person con- 
ceived by the analogy of our personality. The men 
who were confronted with this problem had also the 
experience which led to the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit as a Third Person in the divine Trinity; but 
with this we are not now concerned except so far as it 
explains why the distinctions within the Unity are 
three and not only two. 

The Being and Life of God surpass our powers 
of comprehension. Christian theology is, in this 
sense, emphatically agnostic. It constantly declares 
that God is above and beyond our knowledge. But 
it does not on that account admit that any one prop- 
osition is as true about Him as any other. As has 
already often been said, the world exists in grades; 
and it is the destiny of each to be controlled by what 
is higher than itself; indeed only as this happens 
does each grade reveal its own latent capacities. 
Highest of all these grades is Personality. As known 
to us this may not be the last term. But it affords 
the best analogy we have for the Most High. We 
shall think of Him more accurately when we think 
of Him in terms of Personality than in any other way. 

Now this Divine Personality cannot (as we saw) 
be the Personality of one Person only, if it is true 
that God is seen in Jesus Christ. Yet there is as- 
suredly one God and no more. The simple Christian 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST —139 


need not go beyond this affirmation: ‘The Father 
is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. 
And yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” 
But our task at present is to understand this so far 
as we may. 

What is it that constitutes the distinction of one 
Person from another? And how far is this distinct- 
ness compatible with real unity of Being, or (to use 
the technical term) of Substance? It seems to me 
that we are distinguished from one another by two 
principles. One of these is essential; it is the mere 
numerical difference in the centers of consciousness 
themselves. I, being myself, am not you; you, in 
being yourself, are not I. We are distinct selves. 
We may hold the same opinions, share the same ex- 
perience, aim at the same goal; but we do it together 
and remain distinct. The other principle is accidental. 
I am the child of my parents, a native of my country, 
a member of my school and university; these things 
are not mere external appendages to my personality, 
but actually make it what it is. And any two finite 
persons living under the conditions of space and time 
will be distinguished forever by the variety in the 
circumstances of their history. Even two twins can 
never have quite the same experience. They may 
stand side by side as they look at a mountain; yet 
they see it from slightly different angles. Even if 
they change places, the order in which they see it 
from the two angles of vision will be different. 

Clearly these differences, which I have called 
accidental, are due to the conditions of our finitude. 
If we conceive centers of consciousness capable of 


140 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


envisaging the totality of things and themselves 
immune from the conditions of time and space, differ- 
ences of this kind would vanish. But the other differ- 
ences would remain. What we should then have 
would be three centers of one consciousness. Any 
further treatment of this theme must be postponed; 
but so much needed to be said in elucidation of the 
fundamental Christian conviction that Jesus is God. 
In Him God is incarnate; and inasmuch as God is 
one it is not part of God, but God in His fullness who 
is incarnate thus. Yet it is God in one of the three 
Persons or centers of His one spiritual Being who is 
incarnate, and that one which though coequal in 
glory is derivative and not primary. 

We have now to see how far the interpretation 
which the Apostles achieved and the Church form- 
ulated finds support in the recorded words and deeds 
of Jesus Himself. When above we attempted a survey 
of the Gospels it was to gauge the understanding of 
Jesus Christ which His disciples had reached at va- 
rious stages. Now we turn back to the Historic Figure 
portrayed in the Gospels and ask how far we find 
there a basis for the faith which sprang up in the 
infant Church, and what light the record throws on 
the problem which that faith creates, the problem 
how Jesus Christ is God. 

The first point to which I would call attention is 
the fact that the Synoptic evangelists are obviously 
concerned with history and not with theology. No 
doubt they tell the story with a religious aim in view; 
no doubt they tell it, each according to the spiritual 
needs of those readers whom he has chiefly in view. 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST I4I 


But their concern is with history. So, to take the 
most signal instance for illustration, the facts of our 
Lord’s Passion are minutely told, but there is no 
attempt to indicate a doctrine of the Atonement. 
The Synoptists are concerned to tell a story; what 
light does the story throw on our inquiry? 

The earliest of the Gospels—St. Mark’s—is plainly 
designed to suggest that with John the Baptist, and 
still more with our Lord, divine power came into the 
world. His first words are: ‘‘The beginning of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ The words 
‘Son of God” do not, as we have seen, necessarily 
imply Deity, though, of course, they are compatible 
with it. But they certainly imply something more 
than mere humanity. Our Lord never relies on His 
miracles as evidence for men’s faith in Him to rest 
upon, but this only makes the more impressive the 
picture of power proceeding from Him in works of 
love as He moves about among men. 

Again, there is that perfection of intercourse with 
the Father which every careful reader of the story 
notices. A man in the midst of the sinful world who 
is never separated from perfect communion with God 
is a miracle quite as great as any of the recorded 
wondrous works. 

Further, we note the explicit claim to be the Judge 
of all men and of all nations—surely a divine function. 
And we recall the untroubled confidence with which 
He substitutes for the Mosaic Law His own legisla- 
tion as its fulfillment, though He not only admits but 
even insists upon the divine authority of the Mosaic 
Law. He calls the law Divine, and alters it. In this 


142 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


He does not state a doctrinal theory of His own Person 
nor give any indication that such a theory is in His 
mind. But He does without either arrogance or in- 
congruity what only God can fitly do. But besides 
this there are words of direct claim to be the Mediator 
between God and men. ‘All things have been de- 
livered unto me of my Father; and no one knoweth 
the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
willeth to reveal him.’ ! Those words, with their 
markedly Johannine ring, belong to what the critics 
tell us is the very oldest and safest strand of evidence— 
the non-Marcan matter which is common to St. 
Matthew and St. Luke. But they are associated, as 
such utterances always are, with spiritual experience. 
Both evangelists associate them with the words about 
revelation unto babes, and St. Matthew further 
associates them with the invitation “‘Come unto Me,” 
which is virtually their translation from the language 
of theology into the language of practical religion. 
No one can say “‘Come unto me and I will give you 
rest”? except one who can say “I and the Father are 
one,” for it is only in the Eternal God that the souls 
of men find rest. The claim is not made as a claim, 
but rather in exposition of a spiritual experience, and 
it is so phrased as to be intelligible to those who recall 
it in the light of a fuller insight, but hardly intelligible 
to the Apostles as they first heard the words. We note 
this feature again when we turn to St. John’s Gospel. 

Did He ever make use of powers that are altogether 
outside the reach of ordinary men? The question is 


1St. Matthew xi. 27; St. Luke x. 22, 


SS ae 2 en 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST 143 


hard to answer, because we simply do not know what 
power would be possessed by a man who was, and 
always had been, in perfect fellowship with God. It 
is narrated that St. Peter was able to walk on the 
water until his faith gave way to fear. But perhaps 
at the stilling of the storm and perhaps at the Trans- 
figuration, and certainly (as I should say) at the feed- 
ing of the multitude, He displayed powers beyond 
those of men however inspired. It is noticeable that 
when He stilled the storm He did not pray to His 
Father or invoke the Divine Name; He spoke as the 
Lord of the elements, and we recall the bewilderment 
of the disciples at His doing so. 

We turn to St. John’s Gospel. It has long been 
my conviction that the supposed contrast between the 
teaching of the Synoptists and of St. John does not 
really exist. The two pictures are to some extent 
supplementary, but they represent a Figure recog- 
nizably identical. In St. John there are more frequent 
references to the unbroken fellowship with the Father, 
but nothing that in principle goes further than the 
passage already quoted, “‘All things have been de- 
livered unto me of my Father,” unless it be the words, 
“T and the Father are one.”’ And even these words 
are uttered, not primarily for their theological signif- 
icance, but in justification of an equation in spiritual 
experience already implied: ‘‘No one shall snatch 
them out of my hand,” ‘‘no one is able to snatch them 
out of the Father’s hand.” The claim, moreover, is 
itself justified by the reference to Psalm 1xxxii., which, 
as we saw, prevents it from being a dogmatic assertion 
of absolute Deity. 


144 CHRIST THE ‘TRUTH 


The total impression, strong in the Synoptists and 
permanently vivid in St. John, is that which St. John 
expresses in his Prologue. ‘‘We beheld his glory, 
glory as of an only-begotten from a Father.” Through 
the human life there worked a power which was felt 
as coming from beyond, from God Himself, who here 
had found His uniquely perfect self-expression. 

Can we then penetrate at all the consciousness of 
Jesus Christ in the days of His earthly ministry? Let 
us make the attempt, reminding ourselves that just in 
the degree in which we accept the Church’s account 
of Him we shall expect to find ourselves unable to 
reach any clear understanding of His Person; man, 
who is not yet God-possessed, cannot comprehend the 
perfect union of God and Man. 

Christian theologians have tried in various ways 
to represent the Incarnation in the language appro- 
priate to the thought of their day. As we set out upon 
the same attempt let us remember that no one theory 
has or can have the stamp of orthodoxy; and no theory 
is heretical or heterodox unless it denies that Jesus 
Christ is both Perfect God and Perfect Man. 

First then let us be sure that the Incarnation was a 
reality and not a sham. He who lived among men 
and died on the Cross was the Second Person of the 
Eternal Trinity. But the life He lived on earth was 
a real human life, subject to all limitations that are 
the lot of humanity, and subject also to all tempta- 
tions, save only such as arise from sin committed in 
the past.1 He grew in knowledge as He grew in 
stature, and learned by the same processes by which 


1 This, I am sure, is the true meaning of Hebrew iv. 15. 


THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST 145 


other men learn. But He was aware of an intimacy 
with God which He found that other men had not 
experienced. He interpreted this as a call to fulfill the 
promise of the Messiah who should come. The Voice 
that hailed Him at His Baptism called Him to begin 
the Messianic work. He comes among men healing 
and teaching, calling to repentance and proclaiming 
the divine Kingdom which it was the function of the 
Messiah to found. The divine is working through the 
human, and normally at least within its limitations. 
His prayers are real prayers. The Agony in Geth- 
semane is a real Agony, and the prayer then uttered is a 
real cry of humanity to its Creator. But all the while 
through the human channel comes flooding the divine 
Love and Power and Knowledge of the souls of men. 
He is conscious that He is something more than one 
sent by God. He is aware of such union with God, 
and of commission for such divine functions, that He 
stands for God before men. He knows that He is in 
the Father and the Father in Him. As He approaches 
the glory of the uttermost sacrifice, He remembers a 
like glory which had been His, before the world was.! 
Most markedly as the human personality ? reaches its 
complete development—being made perfect by suffer- 
ing—it reveals itself as having never been the ultimate 
fact about this human life. Behind it, working 


1St. John xvii. 5. 

2 For those who think of Person or Personality, as equivalents of 
Hypostasis this will have a heretical (Nestorian) sound. But St. 
Cyril and Nestorius did not mean by Hypostasis what I mean by 
Personality; nor did either apparently mean by it what the other 
meant. 


146 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


through it, utterly expressed by it so far as human 
nature allowed, but transcending it as Godhead tran- 
scends humanity, is found the Divine Word Himself. 
In order to live and die and rise again as Man he had 
subjected Himself to all the conditions of our life. 
He had, as St. Paul said, ‘‘emptied Himself.’”’ We 
shall be wrong if we infer that during those years the 
Second Person of the Trinity was denuded of those 
divine attributes for which there is no room in a 
human life. We have no data enabling us to draw 
inferences of that kind. What we may justly say is 
that from that moment there is in God not only a 
sympathetic understanding of our state and of death 
itself, but a real experience. He Himself hath suffered, 
being tempted. This, I submit, is the impression left 
on the open-minded reader of the Gospels. They tell 
the story of a human life; but humanity is not the last 
word about it. He who so lived is not self-occupied 
or concerned with doctrines of His own Person. But 
He spontaneously and with conscious appropriateness 
does what only God can do. At times, as spiritual 
occasion arises, the implications of this come vividly 
before His mind. He is not self-analytical but He 
is self-revealing: and the self that He reveals is more 
than human, more than superhuman; it is specifically 
divine. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 


That the Great Angell-blinding light should shrinke 
His blaze, to shine in a poore shepherd’s eye; 
That the unmeasur’d God so low should sinke 
As Pris’ner in a few poore Rags to lye; 
That from his Mother’s Brest he milke should drinke, 
Who feeds with Nectar Heav’ns faire family; 
That a vile Manger his low Bed should prove 
Who in a throne of stars Thunders above; 


That he whom the Sun serves, should faintly peepe 
Through clouds of Infant flesh; that he the old 
Eternal Word should be a Child, and weepe;. 
That he who made the fire should feare the cold; 
That Heav’ns high Majesty his Court should keepe 
In a clay cottage, by each blast conrol’d; 
That Glories self should serve our Griefs and feares, 
And free Eternity submit to yeares. 
CRASHAW. 


WE have seen that every grade in Reality finds its 
own fulfillment only when it is possessed by a higher 
grade, and that each higher grade uses those which 
are lower than itself for its expression. From this it 
follows that humanity only reveals its true nature 
when it is indwelt by what is higher than itseli—and 
supremely when it is indwelt by the Highest; and that 
the Highest uses what is lower to express Himself 
and does this the more adequately as this lower ap- 
proximates to likeness with Himself, so that of all 


148 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


things known to us human nature will express Him 
most perfectly. But if this is so, and if in Jesus Christ 
God lived on earth a human life, then it must be true 
that in Jesus Christ we shall find two things. In 
Jesus Christ we shall find the one adequate presenta- 
tion of God—not adequate, of course, to the infinite 
glory of God in all His attributes, but adequate to 
every human need, for it shows us God in terms of our 
own experience. But in Jesus Christ we shall find 
also the one adequate presentation of Man—not man 
as he is apart from the indwelling of God, but Man as 
he is in his truest nature, which is only made actual 
when man becomes the means to the self-expression of 
God. 

Part of the difficulty which a great teacher finds in 
conveying the new truth arises from the necessity of 
using words of which the meaning is already fixed. 
So the Lord Jesus was compelled to accept the title 
and office of the expected Messiah, because that came 
nearer than any other that existed to the truth about 
Himself. The central core of meaning attached to 
this title was that the Messiah would inaugurate the 
Kingdom of God; and this indeed He did; but all the 
existing conceptions of the Kingdom and of the mode 
of its inauguration were so inadequate as to be mis- 
leading and productive of great difficulties in the 
minds of His hearers. He had to transform the mean- 
ing of the terms ‘‘Messiah” and “Kingdom” by the 
use which He made of them. So, later on, St. John 
spoke of Him as the Logos, though this word too in 
current use had many shades of meaning that were 
irrelevant or misleading. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 149 


This difficulty is nowhere more apparent than in 
the efforts of the early Church to reach some under- 
standing of the Person of Jesus Christ. Somehow, 
all Christians were agreed, He is rightly called God 
and Man. But when men began to inquire How? 
and became involved thereby in controversy, they 
were hampered by the notions of Godhead and Hu- 
manity which already existed. That the same being 
should be both God and Man in the sense in which 
those terms were commonly understood in the period 
_ of the Church’s early history was not an unintelligible 
mystery but a demonstrable impossibility. And. yet 
nothing else was adequate to the fact. The Church at 
Chalcedon virtually gave up the attempt to under- 
stand, while refusing to sacrifice either part of its 
apparently contradictory belief. All through the 
age of the Councils the whole conception of both God 
and Man was undergoing modification, partly through 
the influence of the Incarnation itself, partly also 
through the clarifying and hardening of the Greek 
and (in origin) heathen terminology which was alone 
available. The process of modification is still con- 
tinuing, and presumably will continue until ‘‘the 
consummation of the ages.” But it is at least a gain 
to recognize it; for as soon as we recognize it we are 
delivered from the futile endeavor to fit into a coherent 
theory of the Person of Christ conceptions of God and 
Man which are derived wholly from elsewhere. Cer- 
tainly we do not approach the problem with minds 
nearly blank. The conceptions of God and Man de- 
rived from elsewhere—from ordinary experience, from 
human religion, from pre-Christian revelation—are 


150 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


not merely false or irrelevant.1 They are provisionally 
true, if they are adequate to the facts which give rise 
to them, and the truth which they contain cannot be 
obliterated by further revelation. But their truth is 
of this provisional kind; and we shall not be dismayed 
to find that if they are to become adequate to a fuller 
reality they require modification. On the contrary, 
we shall expect this, and deliberately assist it. Our 
sacramental philosophy leads at once to the supposi- 
tion that nothing is fully Known till it is possessed by a 
higher. An observer on another planet watching the 
nebula out of which our solar system grew might have 
formed a theory of matter which would have been 
adequate to the facts before him; but he could not 
have constructed the sciences of zodlogy, biology, or 
physiology; and when the data were offered on which 
those sciences are based, he would have had to revise 
his theory. Similarly, no observer knowing only 
animal life could anticipate human nature and human 
history. . 

Now if in Jesus Christ God lived a human life for 
the purpose of inaugurating His Kingdom, that is an 
event which marks a new stage as truly as the first 
appearance of life or the first appearance of Man. 
Therefore the theory or doctrine of the Person of 
Christ will not be found by merely stating His nature 
and works in terms of God and Man, but will involve 
restating God and Man in terms of the revelation 
given in Him. It will help us in this task if we recall 
in outline the problems that confronted the Church 


1In Foundations, pp. 213, 214, I wrote so as unwittingly to suggest 
that they are. 


rc 


™ 


~~ 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 1st 


when it attempted this task in the formative period of 
its doctrine. 

One of the earliest of the failures to interpret the 
Person of Christ to human thought is to us one of the 
most interesting. Paul of Samosata had attempted 
to state the union of human and divine in Christ in 
terms of Will. The grounds for this and for his failure 
are equally important. He was concerned to safe- 
guard the “Monarchy” of God, and to this end he 
felt bound to regard Christ’s “self” as something 
other than Deity:! but also he considered that a 
union of “Natures” was unspiritual and unmoral; 
there was no virtue in it; if it was a fact, then fact it 
was, to be admired, perhaps, but not to be praised.? 
He thus drew a sharp distinction between Will and 
Nature, or rather accepted a sharp distinction which 
he found commonly drawn. And the result was two-- 
fold. (1) Will, being conceived as something other 
than Nature, became a specific faculty which showed 
itself in acts of choice and was purest when least 
determined. It is impossible to avoid this result if 
once the fatal contrast between Will and Nature is 
accepted. Nature is fixed, Will indeterminate; Nature 
is stable, Will unstable.2 The Deity of Christ’ was 
made to consist in a union constituted by a continuous 


1Cf. Raven, A pollinarianism, pp. 49 ff. I regret that this most 
stimulating study was published after the present essay was already 
written. 

27d KpaTovpeva TO AOyw THS Picews ovK EXEL Ematvov, TA SE 
oxéoe Pirlas KpaTovpeva Urepawweirat (Paul of Samosata in Adyou 
mpos \xaBivov, quoted by Harnack, History of Dogma, iii. p. 42). 

’Hence the later complaint that Areius presented a Xpioros 
TpemwtOs—a variable Christ. | 


152 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


choice or series of choices—which He might, if he 
pleased, have varied while still remaining unchanged in 
His Nature or in Himself. Thus His self becomes 
something other than Deity and is only externally 
related to Deity. This was rightly felt to be in- 
sufficient, and Paul was condemned.! 

(2) There is another and supplementary result of 
the separation of Will from Nature. As it makes 
Will capricious, so it makes Nature unspiritual. It 
was exactly this consideration that prompted Paul’s 
attempt to frame a Christology in terms of Will. The 
theologians who used the terms Nature, Essence, and 
their cognates had no intention of being materialistic. 
But in fact they could not, and did not, escape from 
the materialistic suggestions of their terminology. 
The essential marks of matter as distinguished from 
spirit are not extension in space or motion through it. 
The essential distinction is that spirit (in the form of 
life) is self-moving, while matter only moves as it is 
impelled, and that spirit loves and hates, thinks and 
desires, while matter does none of these things. The 
distinction between Will and Nature, which both 
prompted the attempt and necessitated the failure of 
Paul of Samosata, was also destined to lead to the 
failure alike of the heretical and of the ‘‘orthodox”’ 
attempts to form an intellegible Christology, which 
arose out of the failure of Paul of Samosata. 

The history of those attempts can be sketched here 
very briefly. The condemnation of Paul involved 


1 At Antioch in A. p. 268. Incidentally it is worthy of record that 
this Council censured the use of the term Omoovcvos (of one sub- 
stance). 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 153 


the necessity of discussing the problem in terms of 
Person, Nature, Essence, Substance. In those terms 
men set themselves to answer the question, How can 
the one Lord Jesus Christ be both God and Manp 
Contemporary thought assumed a divine imperishable 
and perfect nature over against a perishable and 
imperfect nature of which human nature was one form. 

The question then arises, How can God, the Perfect 
and imperishable, be the Creator or immediate cause 
of the imperfect and perishable world? An inter- 
mediary is needed. This is a recognized function of 
the Logos in the scheme of Philo, and Christ is by St. 
John proclaimed as the Logos. It is partly from this 
group of considerations that Arianism arises.! Ac- 
cording to Areius, Christ is begotten before all worlds 
but is not eternal; there was a time when the Son was 
not; He is a creature, though the first of creatures. 
By Him as an intermediary the rest of the creation was 
brought into existence. At the Incarnation the Son, 
who is a creature as distinct from God, but is divine 
in comparison with all other created things, assumed 
a human body but not a human soul. Thus the 
Incarnate Son is neither perfect God nor perfect Man; 
he mediates, not by uniting the two Natures, but by 
standing midway between them. 

In the intellectual terms then commonly employed 
this was some alleviation of the purely intellectual 
aspects of the problem of evil, but plainly it was no 
solution even of this. The transition from the perfect 
Creator to the faulty creation is obscured but not 


1 Arianism is historically a compromise between Adoptionism and 
the Logos-Christology. 


154 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


explained by this sort of mediation. Even on its 
strong side Arianism is very weak. It derived its 
attractiveness no doubt from two prejudices, one 
Hebrew and one Greek, which the Church had not yet 
overcome. The prejudice derived from Hebrew 
sources is that of the sheer transcendence of God, 
unbalanced by any doctrine of immanence; the 
prejudice derived from Greek sources is that of the 
divine “‘apathy” or remoteness from all suffering. 
The Christian revelation was destined to be destruc- 
tive of those prejudices; but they were deeply rooted, 
and we are not yet free from their influence, which 
appears both where they actually persist and in ex- 
treme reactions against them. 

There could, however, be no doubt that the Arian 
construction was incompatible with Christian ex- 
perience. At the Council of Nicewa in A.D. 325 it 
was decisively rejected, and the triumphant doctrine 
found its champion in St. Athanasius. But the im- 
plications of the teaching of Athanasius had still to 
do battle with the two great prejudices. A semi- 
Arianism became prevalent, and though Athanasius 
became Bishop of Alexandria, his episcopate was 
largely spent in exile.! 

The Council of Nicea had made affirmations— 
especially that Christ is “‘not made, being of one sub- 
stance with the Father’”—which could only be grad- 
ually assimilated. At first these affirmations were 
regarded as merely repudiations of Arianism. ‘Thus 
became possible the compromise put forward by 


1 Banished 335; recalled 338; banished 341; recalled 349; fled 355; 
returned 361; fled and died after brief return, 373. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST Iss 


those who wished to say that Christ is “of like sub- 
stance” with the Father. Plainly this ‘‘semi-Arian- 
ism’ is essentially Arianism, and it is difficult now to 
see how this fact could pass unnoticed; probably the 
devotional temper explains the matter. The Arians 
were concerned to insist that Christ is not ‘‘of one 
substance” with the Father; the Semi-Arians were 
concerned to insist that He is “of like substance.”’ 
Intellectually this is really Arian; devotionally its 
tendency is towards orthodoxy; it encourages rather 
than discourages the adoration of Christ. The semi- 
Arians may easily have been good Christians in their 
personal devotions and conduct, for spiritual life can 
persist in full strength with a very inadequate in- 
tellectual apparatus, but the doctrine of Semi-Arian- 
ism would have destroyed Christianity in the course 
of the centuries.! 

For St. Athanasius the issue had been quite simple 
Areius was trying to account intellectually for the 
presence of evil in the creation—in itself a harmless 
but at best a rather unimportant enterprise. His 
suggested explanation cut the ground away from the 
supremely important hope of Christians—the hope 
of deliverance from evil. For both of them the evil 
is there; for Areius it is an intellectual problem, while 
for Athanasius it is a spiritual enemy. It is true that 
the Arian solution of the intellectual problem is a 


1 No doubt the source of:the trouble was the terminology. dpoovcvas 
to many of the Easterns suggested Sabellianism. But O,ocovctos 
is only a compromise, for “likeness” is partial identity, and this 
phrase leaves entirely open the question what identity lies at the root - 
of the ‘‘likeness”’ of substance. 


156 CHRIST. ‘THE ‘TRUTH 


sham; but it is not on this that Athanasius insists. 
The sin of Arianism is that it shifts the center of 
interest from the hope of salvation to the hope of 
explanation. If Areius had triumphed, the Church 
would have become a society of persons holding cer- 
tain highly disputable’ opinions. What Athanasius 
preserved is the ground of the hope of salvation. 

Until Christianity itself had led to the formation 
of a tolerably adequate conception of personality, it 
was inevitable that the problem should be set in terms 
of Substance or Nature. The failure of Paul of Samo- 
sata proved this. But in terms of Nature there is 
no means whereby the faulty and perishable Nature 
can be delivered from its evils and made perfect and 
imperishable except by the communication to it in 
some manner of the Nature which is perfect and 
imperishable. If Christ is to be the Redeemer, the 
Mediator of Salvation, He must Himself have this 
perfect and imperishable Nature to impart; He must 
be “of one substance with the Father,” and this is no 
merely pragmatist determination to believe what 
will prove consoling. Experience testifies that Christ 
is in fact the Saviour; Christians are speaking of what 
they know when they bear witness to the reality of 
redemption; a theory of Christ which fails to account 
for this will be a bad theory, because it will be false 
to the facts, as well as because it will fail to indicate 
to those who do not know where the power of salva- 
tion can be found. 

The question is not yet raised how the Incarnation 
of the Divine Son in one human life can impart the 
Divine Nature to other human beings; in the Euchar- 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 167 


ist, regarded as an extension of the Incarnation, one 
means of accomplishing this was found. And the 
prevalent Platonic doctrine of ‘‘real universals”’ 
was found to help, for, according to this doctrine, if 
Christ assumed Human Nature, He united with the 
Godhead something in which each man participates, 
and the very act of Incarnation is itself the deification 
of the whole human race and of every man and woman 
belonging to it. Yet it is only the Church, to which 
men are admitted by Baptism, which is the Body of 
Christ—not humanity as a whole. This and kindred 
problems were bound to arise later, as they did. For 
the moment Athanasius secured what was most 
fundamental—that, in Christ, One who is Very God 
had for us and for our salvation become Man. 

In quarters where the authority of the Nicene 
Council was recognized there could no longer be 
denial of the full Deity of Christ. But it was still 
possible without flat contradiction of the Council to 
deny His complete humanity. ‘This was done by 
Apollinaris, in whose doctrine the divine Logos is 
represented as taking the place of the human “‘spirit”’ 
in Jesus Christ. In the Incarnate Person there is a 
human body, a human soul, and a divine spirit. But 
this is no less disastrous than Arianism, though it is 
compatible with a more Christian attitude. If salva- 
tion takes place by a communication of essence, not 
only must the essence communicated be truly Divine, 
but the nature receiving must be complete; otherwise 
what is omitted will not be redeemed. Apollinaris 
was condemned at Constantinople in 381. 

This led to yet another attempt. There had long 


158 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


been at Antioch a school of theology which was 
especially devoted to Biblical exegesis and the study 
of our Lord’s Human Life. This study lay, for the 
most part, outside the range of the earlier contro- 
versies, though it would of course produce resistance 
to any denial of the Lord’s real humanity. After the 
condemnation of Apollinarianism (which was devel- 
oped partly in opposition to the Antiochene theology) 
it was natural that the school of Antioch should offer 
its solution. It did so in the doctrine of Nestorius, a 
priest of Antioch who had become Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople. This doctrine affirmed, or was held to 
affirm, that in Christ a Divine Person and a Human 
Person exist side by side. It proclaims Him perfect 
God and perfect Man; but in the terminology of that 
period it provides no real principle of unity. Christ 
is offered rather as our Example than our Redeemer, 
and immense emphasis is laid on man’s free-will, 
whereby he can, if he chooses, imitate the ideal dis- 
played to him in Christ. But again the solution 
destroys just what is most important. Free-will is an 
insufficient ground of hope. If the free-will freely 
chooses evil (or in so far as it freely chooses evil) what 
is to cure it? Certainly it cannot cure itself, because 
it does not will to do so. If it did, it would be already 
cured. St. Augustine was urging these arguments 
against Pelagianism, while St. Cyril was attacking 
Nestorianism on more metaphysical lines. Both 
heresies were condemned together at Ephesus in 431. 

Once more the pendulum swung back. If Christ is 
perfect God and perfect Man, yet is not two Persons, 
must there not be some fusion so that humanity is 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 159 


absorbed into Deity? This was the doctrine of 
Eutyches, whose formula was: Before the Incarnation, 
two Natures; after the Incarnation, one Nature. This 
doctrine was pronounced orthodox by Dioscurus, who 
had succeeded St. Cyril in the throne of St. Athana- 
sius as Patriarch of Alexandria. But it also destroyed 
the grounds of hope, for it offers, not a redeemed 
humanity, but a humanity lost in Deity. Eutyches 
was condemned at Chalcedon in 451, and the Council 
drew up what still remains the authoritative declara- 
tion of Christian belief. 

The formula of Chalcedon was hailed by Nestorius 
as the affirmation of what he had maintained. It 
may be that he was not himself a ‘‘Nestorian”’ and 
never intended what he was condemned for teaching. 
But the formula of Chalcedon certainly does not, 
affirm two Persons in Christ. The truth is that this 
great formula derives part of its value from the clear- 
ness with which it refuses to explain. It does in one 
sense represent “the bankruptcy of Greek patristic 
theology”; 1 it marks the definite failure of all at- 
tempts to explain the Incarnation in terms of Essence, 
Substance, Nature, and the like. It is content to 
reaffirm the fact. But that is all that an authoritative - 
formula ought to do. Interpretations will vary from - 
age to age, according to the concepts supplied to the 
interpreters by current thought. It would be dis- 
astrous if there were an official Church explanation of 


1AsI said in Foundations, p. 230. It is really not the formula, but 
the history of the whole controversy, that leaves the impression of 
bankruptcy. The formula did exactly what an authoritative formula 
ought to do: it stated the fact. 


160, CHRIST ‘THE TRUTH 


the Incarnation. Every explanation is bound to be 
inadequate; it will be rare that any explanation is 
other than positively misleading. What the Church 
must safeguard is the fact; individual Christians may 
offer explanations, provided that in doing so they do 
not deny or explain away any part of the fact. The 
statement of fact achieved by the first four Councils 
may be set out as follows: ! 


A.D. 325. The Council of Nicza declares that Jesus 
‘ Christ is truly God. 

A.D. 381. The Council of Constantinople declares 
that Jesus Christ is truly Man. 

A.D. 431. The Council of Ephesus declares that 
Jesus Christ, both God and Man, is One 
Person. 

A.D. 451. The Council of Chalcedon declares that the 
One Lord, Jesus Christ, is both God and 
Man. 


One other ancient controversy requires our attention 
for a moment. Since the condemnation of Paul of 


1The unwary reader is warned against the supposition that the 
significance of the Councils can be really represented in such a tabula- 
tion. The summary is bound to be superficial, and can only be true 
so far as it is commonplace. The formule of the Councils gather up 
and focus great movements of living thought, and are only really 
understood when related to those movements. Moreover, the suc- 
cessive affirmations do not represent discoveries but progressive 
articulation of what was known all along. But this whole sketch is 
not an attempt to make a contribution to the study of the period, for 
which I am quite incompetent, having never in any real sense studied 
it myself. But it may help our own reconstruction to recall the 
focusing points of classical theology. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 161 


Samosata there had been little discussion of the Lord’s 
Will. But the problems which had been worked out 
in terms of Nature awaited treatment in relation to 
the Will. There arose a belief, somewhat akin to 
Apollinarianism, that in the Incarnate Word there is 
only one Will—the divine Will. But this involves 
an imperfect humanity. Consequently the Sixth 
General Council, held at Constantinople in 680, 
condemned the ‘‘Monothelite” heresy and affirmed 
that in Jesus Christ there are two Wills—the divine 
and the human. And there could be no escape from 
this in the terms in which the problem was stated. 
If Christ has no human Will, His human nature is 
imperfect. Yet we are thus brought very near Nesto- 
rianism; for if there is a divine Will side by side with a 
human Will, how is this to be distinguished from a 
divine Person side by side with a human Person? 
By this time, however, the life was out of the con- 
troversy, and the decision arrived at was merely a 
logical deduction from the earlier affirmations. 

The repudiation of Nestorianism involved the 
denial of any human “Person” in the Incarnate 
Christ. There are two Natures—human and divine; 
but there is only one “Person”’—the divine Logos. 
Hence our Lord’s humanity is described as “‘imper- 
sonal.” St. Cyril was especially insistent on this 
point. Our Lord is Man; but He isnot aman. There 
is no element in traditional orthodoxy which causes 
to the mind of the twentieth century so great difficulty 
as this. But the difficulty arises from the whole 
context of thought in the two periods. The word 
“Person” is by no means an exact equivalent even 


< 


162 CHRIST ‘THE TRUTH 


for its own Latin original “Persona’’; it is also a 
most misleading equivalent for Hypostasis, the Greek 
term here in question, though perhaps nearer to this 
than to “Persona.” The Hypostasis does not include 
any of the qualities or activities of the being con- 
cerned; the Council which affirmed two Wills in 
Christ still affirmed one Hypostasis. This word is 
the Greek form of Substantia, which again is most 
misleadingly represented by Substance. The Hypos- 
tasis or Substantia is the point of reference whereby 
attributes are determined as belonging to that being 
and not another. It is in any object the point of 
reference whereby it is distinguished from all other 
objects, even though they share the same attributes. 
Two things are green; and the greenness in both is 
- one; but there are two green things because the one 
greenness is an attribute of two Hypostases. Perhaps 
the nearest term to Hypostasis in any modern treat- 
ment of the mind is Kant’s ‘‘analytic unity of apper- 
ception”’—though the parallel is far from complete. 
The plain fact is that we have ceased to believe in the 
thing of which Hypostasis is the name. It would be 
interesting and instructive to trace the treatment of 
this term in theology down to the doctrine of En- 
hypostasia elaborated by Leontius of Byzantium, in 
which the controversies it had occasioned finally 
came to rest.1 It is important to note the spiritual 
values involved and to conserve them. It may be 
useful to refer to the old disputes by way of steadying 
our own speculations. But there is really so little of 


1Cf. A Study in Christology, by Relton; an extremely valuable 
contribution to the subject. 





THE PERSON OF CHRIST 163 


common meaning between the terms “ Hypostasis” 
and ‘‘Person,” and there is so little in our thinking 
that corresponds to ‘‘Hypostasis”’ at all, that discus- 
sions about it had better he left to specialists in antiq- - 
uities. In any case we should not be deterred from 
using the terms Personality or Person, when they 
seem to be appropriate, by the fact that the similar 
use of Hypostasis would be heretical. 

The point for which St. Cyril was contending was 
the universal efficacy of the Incarnation. Christian 
experience leaves no doubt that ‘‘in Christ’ (to use 
St. Paul’s great phrase) we are delivered from sin and 
united to God; Christian devotion constantly pleads 
the sacrifice of Christ as availing for the worshiper. 
In the language of Substance and Nature this can 
only be accounted for if Christ is not a man among 
men but is Human Nature itself (including yours and 
mine and every one else’s) united to the Divine Word. 
By the method of thought then in use, to regard Him 
as @ man was to make Him an example only—an indi- 
vidual for other individuals to copy. If His union of 
Deity and Humanity is to avail for me, He must have 
taken to Himself not a human personality but Human 
Nature itself, this being conceived assomething existing 
independently, in which individual “persons” shared.1 


1 Christology is mainly a concern of the Eastern Church, for which 
the Atonement is an implication of the Incarnation. In the West 
Roman law took the place of Greek metaphysics as the controlling 
influence. St. Anselm in the Cur Deus homo certainly does not re- 
gard Christ as including me in His sacrifice. ‘‘Take my beloved 
Son and offer Him for thyself.” For the Greeks the center of interest 
is the Incarnation of God; for the Latins it is the Death of God incar- 
nate. 


164 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


We have made no attempt to study in detail the 
formative controversies through which the Church 
reached its formulated doctrine; we have only re- 
viewed the outline of those controversies in order to 
note what will be of value in our own attempt to offer 
an interpretation by the help of the terms and con- 
cepts familiar in the thought of our own time. 

When Life supervenes upon Matter, it does not 
indeed lead to any contradiction of the “laws” of 
physical chemistry, but it takes direction of the 
physico-chemical system; it asserts priority in the 
sense that the explanation of the action of the living 
thing is sought in the requirements of its life. The 
physical system supplies the conditions sine quibus 
non; the life supplies the efficient causation. So when 
Mind supervenes upon the living organism, it takes 
direction and becomes the cause of the agent’s con- 
duct. Weshall expect, therefore, to find that when 
God supervenes upon humanity, we do not find a 
human being taken into fellowship with God, but 
God acting through the conditions supplied by human- 
ity. And this is the Christian experience of Jesus 
Christ; he is spoken of as a Mediator, but that ex- 
pression is used, not to signify one who is raised above 
humanity by an infusion of deity, but one in whom 
deity and humanity are perfectly united. This is the 
first point which the early theologians were concerned 
about in their insistence that in Christ there is only 
one Hypostasis and that this is not human but divine. 
The root of this belief is, however, the testimony of 
Christian experience, that fellowship with Christ is in 
itself fellowship with God. This testimony coincides 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 165 


with what we are led to expect by the analogy of the 
whole Creation. We may say, then, without any 
hesitation that Christ is not a man exalted to perfect 
participation in the Divine Nature or Life; He is God, 
manifest under the conditions of humanity. The first 
disciples had to approach by gradual stages the real- 
ization of what lay behind the human life and was 
finding expression in and through it; that was the 
order of discovery; but it is not the order of reality. 
We see a man’s bodily movements first and from 
them infer his purpose and character; but the purpose 
is prior and directs the movements. So we see the 
human life and infer the divine Person; but the Person 
controls and directs the life. What we find in Chris- 
tian experience is witness, not to a Man uniquely 
inspired, but to God living a human life. 

Now this is exactly the culmination of that strati- 
fication which is the structure of Reality; far therefore 
from being incredible, it is to be expected, it is ante- 
cedently probable. Even had there been no evil in 
the world to be overcome, no sin to be abolished and 
forgiven, still the Incarnation would be the natural 
inauguration of the final stage of evolution. In this 
sense the Incarnation is perfectly intelligible; that is 
to say, we can see that its occurrence is all of a piece 
with the scheme of Reality as traced elsewhere. 

But in another sense it is and must remain beyond 
our understanding; we can understand the grades of 
Reality subordinate to our own; we can in some degree, 
though perhaps not completely, understand our own. 
For the understanding of those above our own, or of 
our own as completed by the indwelling of the higher, 


166 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


we have not the necessary data. Our effort, therefore, 
to deal with the problems that arise from belief in the 
Incarnation must start with the confession, or rather 
with the claim, that from the nature of the case their 
solution cannot be found by us. If any man says that 
he understands the relation of Deity to Humanity 
in Christ, he only makes it clear that he does not 
understand at all what is meant by an Incarnation. 

First there is the Nestorian difficulty: can we call 
a child three months old by the name of God? Or, to 
put the question in a modern shape, are we to say 
that the Infant Jesus directed from His manger at 
Bethlehem the affairs of Mars? This kind of difficulty 
has an honorable origin in so far as it is based on 
a determination to think things through, but it also 
arises from following the speculative inquiry into 
regions where we have no data, and forgetting the 
purpose of the divine act which is being considered. 
That purpose would seem to be twofold—Revelation 
and Atonement. For the former, what is necessary 
is that Jesus Christ should be truly God and truly 
Man; for the latter what seems to be necessary is that 
human experience as conditioned by the sin of men 
should become the personal experience of God the 
Son—not an object of external observation but of 
inward feeling (to use the language of human con- 
sciousness). Neither of these requires that God the 
Son should be active only in Jesus of Nazareth during 
the days of the Incarnation. “The light that lighten- 
eth every man” did not cease to do so when He shone 
in full brilliance in one human Life. Jesus did not 
control affairs in Mars, or in China. But God the 


THE PERSON) OF CHRIST 167 


Son, who is the Word of God by whom, as agent, all | 
things came to be and apart from whom no single 
thing has come to be, without ceasing His creative 
and sustaining work, added this to it that He became 
flesh and dwelt as in a tabernacle among us, so that 
as in the old Tabernacle there dwelt the cloud of the 
divine glory, so in Him we saw a glory that shone 
through Him but found in Him its perfect and unique 
expression—“‘glory as of an only-begotten Son from 
a Father.’’ He who is always God became also Man— 
not ceasing to be God the while. For the Incarnation 
was effected ‘‘not by Conversion of the Godhead into 
flesh, but by taking of Manhood into God.” 

No doubt this position involves a difficulty with 
regard to the mode of the consciousness of the Eternal 
Son; but that is exactly where the difficulty ought 
most clearly to arise, for about the mode of His con- 
' sciousness we can have simply no knowledge what- 
ever. Meanwhile, if it is admissible at all it brings an 
immense alleviation of the problem which theologians 
have sought to solve by pressing to its furthest im- 
plications St. Paul’s language about the self-emptying 
of Himself by the preéxistent Christ in the act of His 
Incarnation. I confess to an uneasy feeling that when 
this vigorous expression of a great spiritual truth is 
taken as precise and scientific theology, we are in- 
volved in something dangerously close to mythology. 
To say that God the Eternal Son at a moment of time 
divested Himself of Omniscience and Omnipotence in 
order to live a human life, reassuming these attributes 
at the Ascension, seems to me just the kind of thing 
that no event occurring on this planet could ever 


168 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


justify. It is not of course a view that can be con- 
demned as impossible; but it involves an assertion 
about the Infinite and Eternal which reverence should 
make us slow to make, and the evidence on which it 
rests is such as, in my judgment, neither is nor could 
be sufficient to warrant it. 

The position outlined above offers an alternative 
solution of the problem. The constituent elements of 
the problem may be stated in the words of Professor 
Mackintosh: 


(1) Christ is now Divine, as being the object of 
faith and worship, with whom believing men 
have immediate, though not unmediated, 
fellowship. 

(2) In some personal sense His Divinity is eternal, 
not the fruit of time, since by definition God- 
head cannot have come to be ex nihilo; His 
pre-mundane being therefore is real, not ideal 
merely. 

(3) His life on earth was unequivocally human. 
Jesus was a man, a Jew of the first century, 
with a life localized in and restricted by a 
body organic to His self-consciousness; of 
limited power, which could be, and was, 
thwarted by persistent unbelief; of limited 
knowledge, which, being gradually built by 
experience, made Him liable to surprise and 
disappointment; of a moral nature susceptible 
of growth, and exposed to lifelong tempta- 
tion; of a piety and personal religion char- 
acterized at each point by dependence on 
God. In short, He moved always within the 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 169 


lines of an experience humanly normal in 
constitution, even if abnormal in its sinless 
quality. The life Divine in Him found ex- 
pression through human faculty, with a self- 
consciousness and activity mediated by His 
human milieu! 


The Professor then continues as follows: ‘‘It is 
impossible to think these positions together save as 
we proceed to infer that a real surrender of the glory 
and prerogatives of deity, ‘a moral act in the heavenly 
sphere,’ must have preceded the advent of God in 
Christ. We are faced by a Divine self-reduction 
which entailed obedience, temptation, and death. So 
that religion has a vast stake in the Kenosis as a fact, 
whatever the difficulties as to its method must be. 
No human life of God is possible without a prior self- 
adjustment of deity. The Son must empty Himself 
in order that from within mankind He may declare 
the Father’s name, offer the great sacrifice, triumph 
over death; and the reality with which to reach this 
end He laid aside the form and privilege of deity is 
the measure of that love which had throbbed in the 
Divine heart from all eternity.” 


1H. R. Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 469, 470. The 
Professor adds a fourth paragraph: ‘‘(4) We cannot predicate of Him 
two consciousnesses or two wills; the New Testament indicates noth- 
ing of the kind, nor indeed it is congruous with an intelligible psychol- 
ogy. The unity of His personal life is axiomatic.” I omit this para- 
graph, not because I disagree with it as it stands, but because (1) I 
think that in the terms which were alone available for the early 
Church the phrases censured were the best that could be reached; 
(2) because in that language there is contained a fundamental truth 
which must be expressed somehow. 


170 CHRIST THE TRUTH — 


So Dr. Mackintosh sets out the religious interest 
in the Kenosis. But the difficulties are intolerable. 
What was happening to the rest of the universe during 
the period of our Lord’s earthly life? To say that the 
Infant Jesus was from His cradle exercising provi- 
dential care over it all is certainly monstrous; but to 
deny this, and yet to say that the Creative Word was 
so self-emptied as to have no being except in the Infant 
Jesus, is to assert that for a certain period the history 
of the world was let loose from the control of the Crea- 
tive World, and ‘‘apart from Him” very nearly every- 
thing happened that happened at all during thirty 
odd years, both on this planet and throughout the 
‘ immensities of space. 

All these difficulties are avoided if we suppose that 
God the Son did indeed most truly live the life re- 
corded in the Gospel, but added this to the other work 
of God. There are indications that this is the Johan- 
nine view.! We are then able to see how Jesus Christ 
may be truly human, subject to all the conditions of 
His human life, ‘‘a Jew of the first century,” and yet 
be very God, without any such self-emptying of God 
as has a mythological appearance and involves stupen- 
dous difficulties in general philosophy or theology. 
The only objection to it that I can see is that it appears 
to make the Incarnation a mere episode in the Life of 
the Eternal Son, so that a man may say, ‘‘ Yes; He 


1Cf. St. Johni. 9, 15, 18; iii. 13. It may be thought that this theory 
imports into the doctrine of the Incarnate Son just such a differentia- 
tion of ‘‘Persons” as we found (pp. 115, 116) that the Incarnation 
itself involves in the Godhead. This problem is dealt with. later. 
See pp. 280, 281. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 171 


accepted humiliation and suffering as a wealthy man 
may go and join the unemployed; he will suffer some 
discomfort, but he has his riches all the while, and has 
never really shared the bitterness of their experience; 
he has not become one of them.”’ But this objection 
rests on a misunderstanding. If God the Son lived the 
Life recorded in the Gospels, then in that Life we see, 
set forth in terms of human experience, the very reality 
of God the Son. The limitations of knowledge and 
power are conditions of the revelation, without which 
there would be no revelation to us at all; but the Per- 
son who lives under those limitations is the Eternal 
Son in whom the life of the Eternal Father goes forth 
in creative activity and returns in filial love. The 
Incarnation is an episode in the Life or Being of God 
the Son; but it is not a mere episode, it is a revealing 
episode. There we see what He who is God’s wisdom 
always is, even more completely than any Kenotic 
theory allows. This view makes the humiliation and 
death of Christ “‘the measure of that love which has 
throbbed in the divine heart from all eternity.” Cer- 
tain attributes or functions incompatible with human- 
ity are, in this activity of the Eternal Son, not exer- 
cised; but what we see is not any mere parable of 
the Life of God, not an interval of humiliation be- 
tween two eternities of glory. It is the divine glory 
itself. 

As we watch that human Life we do not say: ‘‘Ah 
—but soon He will return to the painless joy of the 
glory which was His and will be His again.” As we 
watch that Life, and above all, that Death we say, 
“We behold His glory.” For if God is most truly 


172 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


known as Love, then the glory of God is chiefly seen in 
the activity of Love. 

Indeed, it is the Kenotic theory which makes the 
Incarnation episodic; it too makes it a revealing 
episode, but it makes its very substance an episode. 
Our view regards the mode as episodic—the accept- 
ance of conditions necessary for the very occurrence 
of a revelation; but the substance is eternal. The 
limitations are the means whereby the Eternal Son, 
remaining always in the bosom of the Father, lays 
bare to.us the very heart of Godhead. 

In doing this, moreover, the Son of God has made 
our condition matter of His own experience. To the 
sympathy and insight of omniscient love no limit can 
be set, and we dare not say that after the Incarnation 
He understood us better than before. But it is mere 
matter of historic fact that before the Incarnation 
men could not say, and after the Incarnation we 
thankfully can say, concerning the Eternal Son Him- 
self: “in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, 
He is able to succor them that are tempted.” 

That leads us at once to the next subject of our 
inquiry. We have spoken of the relation of the Eternal 
Son to the Incarnate Life; we have now to speak of 
the relation of that human experience to the Eternal 
Son. As the problem is now set, the difficulties are 
not baffling, though it is still true that anything like a 
complete analysis is forever out of our reach. First 
we say without further hesitation that on all matters 
of mere information He shared the views of His time. 
Bishop Knox has expressed this point so admirably 
that I will state my position in his words: 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST FE 


“The human reason in Jesus, if it was not to be 
merged and lost in the Divine, must have its real state 
of nescience, of growth in knowledge through docility, 
through experience, through meditation. If we deny 
this, we do in fact deny the Manhood of Jesus Christ, 
and also His knowledge of, and sympathy with, our 
infirmities. For how large a portion of our troubles, 
and even of our sins, is due to our mistakes! The 
infallibility of Jesus—we say it with all reverence and 
consciousness of our fallibility—-was not due to the 
superseding of human fallibility by Divine Omnis- 
cience. It was due to the intimate relation between 
the Divine and human in one Personality, and was 
consistent with the full experience of his Humanity. 
No one supposes, for instance, that the Son of Man 
used His Omniscience to concern Himself with modern 
scientific discoveries, such as the use of steam, electric- 
ity, or radium. The self-limitation of His Omnis- 
cience is not to be ascertained by a priori guesses or 
pronouncements. We are soon out of our depths in 
fathoming such an ocean. All that we can do is to 
turn to the records and ascertain the facts.” 

“Tt is possible, no doubt, to dismiss all reflection 
concerning our Lord’s use and teaching of the Law by 
summary reference to the Divine in His Personality. 
He interpreted the Law, because He was the author 
of the Law. He modified or rescinded it by the same 
power by which He imposed it. But this reasoning 
does, in fact, merge the human in the divine. At 
the most important point, His attitude to the Old 
Testament, His humanity disappears. We are at 
once on the road to the Docetic, the unreal, phan- 


174 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


tom Christ, who never was truly Man. The Incar- 
nation, which is the foundation of all our faith, 
disappears. ‘ 

“This point deserves more attention than it com- 
monly receives from many of those for whose use this 
book is specially intended. With the deepest respect 
for their sincere piety, and for their regard for the 
Word of God, which called their spiritual life into 
being, and has sustained it, a very earnest entreaty is 
addressed to them to consider all that is involved in 
too hasty recourse to our Lord’s Divinity for solution 
of all Old Testament problems. Especially this loss is 
involved; that we no longer have the companionship 
of our Lord in our study of the Divine Word—the 
problems which occurred to Him in His boyhood, with 
which He confronted the doctors, disappear: the 
lessons of His mother’s lap, the teaching of Joseph, 
the lessons at School, the readings and expositions in 
the Synagogue, His own private meditations—all 
these became unreal, for He, as Divine, had nothing 
to learn. It would seem that Bible study is robbed of 
more than half its joy if the Child Jesus, the Boy 
Jesus, the Man Jesus, is no longer a fellow-learner 
with ourselves. It is true that we cannot too jealously 
guard the Divinity of Jesus. Nor can we too jealously 
guard His true humanity.” 

“Incarnation involved self-limitation, but in rela- 
tion to all that made for communion with God, our 
Blessed Lord, in relation to the Old Testament, did 
in fact transcend external conditions, did raise Man- 
hood to its most godlike capacities, did fulfill the 
Messianic r6le of unfolding the true meaning of the 


ae 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 175 


Scriptures. But it was not inconsistent with this that 
He should have accepted the conditions of a devout 
Israelite in reference to the Old Testament on its 
purely intellectual side. It was but repeating in 
another form His preference of Bethlehem and Naz- 
areth to Rome and Alexandria.” ! 

We may sum up this matter by citing a writer of 
very different ecclesiastical color from Bishop Knox. 
Dr. Weston, the Bishop of Zanzibar, holds that the 
Incarnation ‘‘made it both possible and necessary that 
He should have no consciousness that His assumed 
human soul could not mediate.’’? How far this 
principle extends is matter for detailed discussion. 
Some would say that it includes the possibility and 
probability of actual error as regards matter of fact; 
others deny this. In any case it is clear that the doc- 
trine of our Lord’s Deity is in no way bound up with 
the correctness of His opinion concerning the author- - 
ship of certain Psalms or any such matter. There can 
be absolute goodness of character in spite of incorrect 
opinions on such matters—indeed on all matters 
where “‘fact”’ and “‘value” are not identical.’ 


1 Knox, On what Authority, pp. 125-26, 132-33, 145. 

2 The One Christ, p. 184. 

’ This seems as good a place as any other for a parenthetic appeal 
that no one will state the problem in the form of the question, “Does 
Christ differ from us in kind or in degree?” This question has an 
appearance of precision which is utterly illusory, and so it starts the 
inquirer on a hopeless quest. The distinction of kind and degree is 
far from clear, as is shown by the difficulty of answering the familiar 
conundrum, “Is the difference between differences of kind and 
differences of degree a difference of kind or a difference of degree?” 

But if the question means, “Is Perfect Man eo ipso God?” the 


176 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Further, there is on our theory no difficulty about 
the reality of growth or the reality of temptation in 
the Incarnate life. The revelation is in the whole. 
Had Herod succeeded in killing the Infant Jesus, 
there would have been an Incarnation, but the revela- 
tion given through it would have been next to nothing 
alike in extent and in significance. At each stage 
Jesus was the perfection of that stage of human life. 
The temptations that came to Him were perfectly 
real, and so was His resistance. He overcame them 
exactly.as every man who does so overcomes a tempta- 
tion—by the constancy of the Will, which is the whole 
being of a man organized for conduct. That Will 
always shows its strength chiefly in certain splendid 
incapacities—as when we say of a good man charged 
with some mean offense, he simply could not do it. 
But in Christ this incapacity towards evil was abso- 
lute; His perfect freedom showed itself, as perfect 
freedom always does, in an inability to sin—the non 
posse peccare of St. Augustine. This is nothing con- 
trary to human nature; rather it is exactly what 
human nature is always aiming at; indeed it is the 
effort towards this that distinguishes human nature as 
personal. One difference there is between the tempta- 
tions of Jesus Christ and those of other men; His Will 
was at each stage undamaged by the previous ad- 
mission of sin. Pain to Him was as painful as it is to 
us; the-desire to avoid it was in itself as strong; but in 
us that desire is fortified by the incompleteness of our 


answer is ““No.”’ Nothing that happens to a creature could possibly 
turn him into his own Creator. At that point the gulf between God 
and Man. is plainly impassable. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 177 


dedication, the partial formation of our Will. In 
Him the whole being was always set to do God’s Will; 
so though there was real struggle and real cost, there 
was no enemy of self-will within, and therefore no 
danger of defeat. There is nothing to puzzle us here. 
Every man of moral purpose is conscious of some 
temptations which he knows that he can overcome, 
though he has to make effort and suffer pain in the 
doing of it. But in us there are also temptations 
which we are doubtful if we can overcome; and there 
are some against which in the strength of our own 
wills alone we are powerless. From such Christ was 
free, for the doubt and the impotence come from the 
presence of sin within the will itself. As we read the 
record two certainties emerge: He certainly had real 
struggles with temptation, and He certainly had no 
anxiety lest He should yield to them and betray His 
mission by falling into sin. This is even more im- 
pressive than the total absence of any consciousness 
of sin committed in the past. 

With each temptation and victory He grew. At 
all stages He was obedient to the Father; but the 
obedience, always perfect at each stage, yet deepened 
as He advanced from the Boy’s subjection in His 
home at Nazareth to the point where He ‘“‘became 
obedient unto death,” 1 so, ‘‘though he was a son, yet 
learned he obedience by the things which he suf- 
heresies 

As the obedience deepened, so did the Love. The 
sacrifice in which love finds expression enters into the 
very fiber of the love; so that by expressing itself love 


1 Philippians ii. 8. * Hebrews v. 8. 


178 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


becomes more perfect. It was in the Passion, and at 
the Last Supper, where He symbolically represented 
it and explained it by anticipation, that the Lord 
“having (always) loved his own which were in the 
world, loved them to the uttermost.” ? 

This human life is the very life of God. It is both 
human and divine in every detail. If we know what 
we are about we may rightly say that the unity of God 
and Man in Christ is a unity of Will, for Will is the 
whole being of a person organized for action. But 
the phrase is liable to mislead, because we have to 
think by the analogy of our own experience, and in us 
Will does not in fact cover the whole of our personal 
being, because we have not attained that perfection of 
personal unity which is the completeness of Will.? 
Therefore in us Will is still departmental; and to say 
that the unity of God and Man in Christ is a unity of 
will consequently suggests that this unity is not com- 
plete, and concerns something only adjectival. It 
is better then to say that in Christ God and Man are 
personally one; the Person of the Man Christ Jesus is 
God the Son. 

Then is the humanity impersonal? or does it find 
its personality only in God the Son? Plainly the 
position indicated is that which was formulated by 

1St. John xiii. 1. 

2 We know that we live on a volcano; even when we have formed 
the habits of a serviceable life, we know that from the hidden recesses 
of our being impulses may arise which will sweep us off our feet. They 
are not yet organized into our will. But Christ is troubled by no such 
anxiety. His will and His whole Being are one. Perhaps this is the 


basis of Dr. Sanday’s suggestion that the Jocus of His Divinity was 
His subconsciousness. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 179 


Leontius of Byzantium with the terms adjusted to 
modern usage. Indeed, the actual adjustment of 
terms is so slight that it may conceal the very real 
modification in the thought expressed. By Person 
we do not understand an ultimate point of reference, 
but the entirety of the spiritual being. As Person 
Jesus is both Man and God. 

But we must not lose what was precious in the older 
way of thinking, especially what was involved in the 
doctrine of the Two Wills. We cannot predicate 
moral progress of God the Son; we must predicate 
such progress, as shown above, of Jesus Christ. There- 
fore the Will in Him, while always one with, because 
expressive of, the Will of God, is not merely identical 
with it. In the struggle with temptation the human 
will or person is at once manifesting and approximat- 
ing to the Will of God, until as the Passion approaches 
and Love is about to be exhibited in the perfection of 
sacrifice, He prays to be glorified with the eternal 
glory—which is the perfect sacrifice of perfect love.! 

Consequently, though there is only one Person, 
one living and energizing Being, I should not hesitate 
to speak of the human personality of Christ. But 
that personality does not exist side by side with the 
divine personality; it is subsumed in it. Will and 
personality are ideally interchangeable terms; there 
are two wills in the Incarnate in the sense that His 
human nature comes through struggle and effort to 
an ever-deeper union with the Divine in completeness 
of self-sacrifice. And it is only because there is this 
real human will or personality that there is here any 


1St. John xvii. 5. 


180 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


revelation to humanity of the divine Will. Thus I 
do not speak of His humanity as impersonal. If we 
imagine the divine Word withdrawn from Jesus of 
Nazareth, as the Gnostics believed to have occurred 
before the Passion, I think that there would be left, 
not nothing at all, but aman.' Yet this human per- 
sonality is actually the self-expression of the Eternal 
Son, so that as we watch the human life we become 
aware that it is the vehicle of a divine life, and that 
the human personality ? of Jesus Christ is subsumed 
in the Divine Person of the Creative Word.? 

The doctrine of the impersonal humanity of Christ 
had, however, another and more practical significance 
than that of preserving a theoretic union of two 
natures in one Person; it was associated with the 
notion of ‘‘real universals,” and implied that when 
Christ assumed human nature He assumed the nature 
of all of us, so that by His Incarnation we are united, 
in Him, to God. That is profoundly important, but 
it makes difficulties when so stated; for it ought to 
involve that all men, whether believers or not, are 
forthwith united to God; and experience tells us that 


1 The question is so unreal that even to ask it is to make false sug- 
gestions; but I leave the illustration as an expression of my meaning, 
which is deliberately crude for the sake of pointedness. 

2J avoid the phrase “human person,” which seems to connote a 
complete individual more definitely than the phrase “human per- 
sonality” which I have used. 

3 Mr Grensted writes to me: “I usually try to solve this problem 
by using the term évépyea, Clearly there are in Christ two évépyeias, 
of which the human progressively expresses the divine. And as 
Will can only be defined intelligibly in terms of conation, the orthodox 
result follows. Any other definition of Will gives one or other of the 
great heresies, besides breaking down inherently.” 


oe =, 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 181 


this union is at best incomplete, while the same theolo- 
gians, who state a doctrine logically involving the 
union of all men with God, actually limit this to mem- 
bers of the Christian Church, who have still, more- 
over, to renew and deepen that unity by sacraments 
and lives of service. 

We still believe in “‘real universals,” but they are 
concrete, not abstract, universals.! There is no such 
thing as human nature apart from all individual 
human beings. But there is a perfectly real thing 
called Mankind or Humanity which is a unit and not 
a mere agglomeration. As each man is a focusing 
point for Reality as seen from the place within it 
which he occupies, he is very largely constituted what 
he is by the character of his fellow-men. Influence 
is not an affair of external impact but of inward con- 
stitution of the person influenced. Therefore Man- 
kind or Humanity is a close-knit system of mutually 
influencing units. In this sense the humanity of every 
one of us is “impersonal”; and the greater the man, 
the less merely “personal” is his humanity. He is 
more, not less, individual than others; but he is in- 
dividual by the uniqueness of his focus for the uni- 
verse, not by his exclusion of all that is not himself. 
He more than others is Humanity focused in one 
center. Into this system of mutually influencing 
units Christ has come; but here is a unit perfectly 
capable, as others are only imperfectly capable, both 
of personal union with all other persons and of refusing 
to be influenced by the evil of His environment. It 
is this more than anything else which proves Him to 


1Cf. Mens Creatrix, pp. 7-23. 


182 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


be more and other than His fellow-men. But thus 
He inaugurates a new system of influence; and as this 
corresponds to God’s Will for mankind its appeal is 
to the true nature of men. So He is a Second Adam; 
what occurred at the Incarnation was not merely the 
addition of another unit to the system of mutually 
influencing units, it was the inauguration of a new 
system of mutual influence, destined to become, here 
or elsewhere, universally dominant. ‘By His Incar- 
nation,” therefore, the Lord did indeed “Raise our 
humanity to an entirely higher level, to a level with 
His own”; but this was not accomplished by the 
‘unspiritual process of an infusion of an alien ‘“‘nature”’ 
but by the spiritual process of mutual influence and 
love that calls forth love. If this seems less than the 
other it is only because we have let our pride teach us 
to emphasize separateness as the fundamental char- 
acteristic of our personality, so that influence only 
shapes but does not constitute us; this we have seen 
to be false. I am mankind—England—my school— 
my family—focused in a point of its own history. 
Mankind—‘‘ Adam”’—has made me what I am. If 
similarly Christ makes me something else—the partici- 
pator in His own divine freedom ?—then indeed 
“there is a new creation; the old things are passed 
away; behold, they are become new.” ® 
Thus in a most real sense Christ is not only a man; 
Heis Man. In Dr. Moberly’s phrase, ‘‘Christ is Man 
not generically but inclusively,” just as He is ‘‘God 
not generically but identically.” All the significance 
1 Archbishop Temple. St. John viii. 36. 
8 2 Corinthians v. 17. 


THE PERSON OF CHRIST 183 


and destiny of the human race is summed up in Him. 
He is the Head of the Body. But this is by no mechan- 
ical identification; it is by a spiritual transformation, 
wrought out, as is the self-manifestation of God in the 
Incarnation, through the process of time and the 
course of history. 


_CHAPTER IX 
THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH 
“The fellowship of the Holy Spirit.”—Sr. Paut. 


In the midst of human history the Universal Spirit 
had appeared at a particular time and a particular 
place, had lived as Man a completely human life, had 
been rejected by His own creatures, had suffered and 
died, had risen in the body in which He suffered, and 
had signified by the enacted parable of the Ascension 
both His liberation from the limiting conditions char- 
acteristic of His earthly ministry and also the taking 
of Manhood, in His Person, into God. 

Such an occurrence must be beyond all comparison 
the most important in history. Indeed, it may fairly 
be said that history, in its full meaning, dates from 
that event. Through all the ages God creates, for 
at all times the universe depends for its existence on 
His sustaining will; but if any division at all is to be 
drawn between a date or period of Creation and a 
period of History subsequent to Creation, it is best 
drawn, so far as this planet is concerned, at the Ascen- . 
sion and Pentecost, which are two phases of one thing, 
the taking of Manhood to the throne of God and the 
indwelling of God in the hearts of men. Creation and 
’ Redemption are, indeed, different; but they are 
different aspects of one spiritual fact, which is the 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND) CHURCH 185 


activity of the Divine Will, manifesting itself in love 
through the Creation, and winning from the Creation 
an answering love. The act whereby this purpose 
should be accomplished was complete at the Ascen- 
sion; all human history from that time onwards is the 
process of eliciting man’s answer. ‘This is still the 
work of God, but that work is thenceforth within the 
souls of men rather than on the objective stage. 
There are still events and occurrences to come; but 
they come now by the working of causes already 
present rather than by any such introduction of a new 
causative force as we find in the Incarnation. 

When the physical presence of the Lord was with- 
drawn at the Ascension, there remained on earth as 
fruit of His ministry no defined body of doctrine, no 
fully constituted society with declared aims and 
methods, but a group of men and women who had 
loved and trusted Him, and who by their love and 
trust and conviction of His Resurrection were united 
to one another. It was in this society that there came 
the experience of spiritual power, certainly a gift of 
God, and of inner compulsion to proclaim alike this 
gift of power and its source in the Life and Death and 
Resurrection of Jesus their Master. This. society is 
a veritable Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It is de- 
finable in terms of the Spirit; and the Spirit is definable 
in terms of it. To be a Christian is to confess Jesus 
as Lord, to have the Spirit, to be a member of the 
Church; it is all of these or any of them, for no dis- 
tinction had arisen between them in experience, and 
none or scarcely any had yet been drawn in thought. 
Here, in the company of the personal disciples of 


186 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Jesus, is found an activity of the Divine Spirit so 
plainly identical with the activity of the same Spirit 
in Jesus of Nazareth, that St. Paul, who, not having 
shared the initial training of the others, comes into 
the society from outside, finds it natural to speak of 
it as His body and of its constituent individuals as 
His limbs or members. 

Thus the fact of the Christian Church and mens’ 
experience of the Holy Spirit appear not only together 
but inextricably intertwined. Of course, the Spirit 
of whom the first Christians had experience was 
recognized by them as one with the Spirit who had 
taught the old prophets; but the mode of His activity 
(or, which is really the same thing, of their awareness 
of Him) was so novel that it marked a new era. St. 
Peter claims the experience of Pentecost as a fulfill- 
ment of the prophetic anticipation of the Day of the 
Lord; + St. John intimates that the Spirit, as Chris- 
tians know Him, could only come after the full revela- 
tion of God in Christ: ‘‘There was not yet Spirit, 
because Jesus was not yet glorified.” ? 

It is not difficult to see why this should be so. The 
control that is exercised over a human being by one 
who loves him and, revealing that love intelligibly 
and unmistakably, calls out from him answering love, 
is far more complete than that exercised by an author- 
ity which gives orders and then punishes or rewards 
in accordance with the obedience rendered. That is 
spoken of in the New Testament as the status of 
slavery, whereas by the revelation of the love of God 
in Christ we have been raised to the status of friends 

1 Acts il. 14-21. 2 St. John vii. 39. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 187 


or children.! The sway of God over men is thus both 
compatible with their freedom, since it elicits a free 
obedience, and also complete as no other can be, since 
it operates through and not against the will. 

We are not at the moment concerned with the 
Theological implications of our experience of the 
Spirit. Plainly the term is very near in its significance 
to the Logos. Before the Incarnation, indeed, there 
were no grounds for drawing any distinction. But for 
Christians there is the very clear distinction that the 
Person of Jesus Christ is external to the disciple—an 
objective fact of perfect holiness objectively achieved 
—while the Spirit is known to him as an inner impetus, 
often struggling and inarticulate, pointing him to the 
perfect Life of Jesus, urging correspondence there- 
with, and supplying the power for accomplishing that 
otherwise impossible demand. We need not at 
present say more than this: as God must be such that 
we can stand to Him in the two relations which we 
occupy to the Eternal Father, Almighty, Omniscient, 
and to the Redeeming Son, suffering and disappointed, 
so also must He be such that we can stand to Him in 
the relation which we occupy to the indwelling Spirit, 
prompting and empowering. 

At present we are concerned with the Spirit in 
manifestation. The presence of the Spirit is proved 
by the appearance of new powers, specially that 
capacity for fellowship which is called love. These 
manifestations appear, of course, in the lives of in- 
dividuals; but only, in the first ages, in the lives of 
those individuals who are members of the Christian 


1St. John xv. 15; Romans viii. 15. 


188 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


society. In that the Spirit is so potent that all divi- 
sions of mankind disappear. ‘‘There is neither Jew nor 
Gentile”—the deepest of divisions based on religious 
tradition has disappeared; “‘there is neither Greek 
nor Scythian’’—the deepest of divisions based on 
culture has disappeared; ‘‘there is neither bond nor 
free’’—the deepest of social and economic divisions 
has disappeared; ‘‘there is neither male nor female” 
—even the division of the sexes has disappeared. 
In place of all of them there is “fone man in Christ 
Jesus.” + All are so dominated by His Will that for 
practical purposes there is only one personality, and 
that is Christ’s. 

So St. Paul sees the meaning of human history to 
be the fulfillment of God’s purpose to ‘“‘sum up all 
things in Christ,” in whom alone already ‘“‘all things 
cohere.”* And he sees the corporate personality of 
Christ, which is the Church, gathering into itself all 
persons and all nations, welding them into unity by 
relating them to the true principle of their being; thus 
the “fone man in Christ Jesus” comes to his full 
growth, ‘‘the measure of the stature of the complete- 
ness of the Christ.” 3 

We have already seen that the task of man is to 
achieve inner and outer unity—the inner unity of 
complete personality and the outer unity of a per- 
fected fellowship as wide as humanity.* For this 
human nature is plainly destined by the qualities 
inherent in it, that is to say, by the qualities originally 


1 Galatians iii. 28, with Colossians iii. 10, 11. 
2 Ephesians i. ro, and Colossians i. 17. 
3 Ephesians iv. 13. 4 Chapters IV. and V. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 189 


bestowed on it by the Creator. Towards this human 
nature is impelled by the Creator’s act at the Incarna- 
tion, and the consequent activity of His Spirit at work 
upon humanity from within. 


Thus the Church’s task is defined for it. It is the | 


herald and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. For 
that it exists, and for service to that end it must be 
organized and equipped. In the first days organiza- 
tion was comparatively unimportant. No one be- 
longed to the Church who was not utterly in earnest. 
To say ‘‘ Jesus is Lord” was so great a self-committal 
that only the activity of the Divine Spirit could be 
held to account for such an utterance. No one then 
passively acquiesced in Christian doctrine. To be- 
lieve was to have faith; to be baptized was to ex- 
perience spiritual re-birth; to be a Church member and 
to be filled with the Spirit were one and the same. 
The very success of the Church brought the seeds 
of its later difficulties. The world saw in the Church 
a power which did for men what they needed. Even 
when Constantine saw in the Church a power of 
coherence nowhere else to be discovered in the decay 
of the ancient world, he was recognizing a real mani- 
festation of the true Spirit. But already men were 
in the Church because they had been so brought up, 
or because it was becoming fashionable, without any 
deliberate surrender to the Spirit in the Church. Thus 
in place of the sharp contrast of Church and World 
there emerged the mutual interaction of a partly 
Christianized World and a partly secularized Church. 
That the World should be partly Christianized was 


1; Corinthians xii. 3. 


190 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


good; it was the beginning of the achievement of 
the Church’s task. But that the Church should be 
partly secularized was disastrous, for it destroyed the 
Church’s power to carry forward its task to fulfill- 
ment. But the Spirit was not quenched, and out of 
the very midst of the Church in its decay was able to 
raise up men who recalled it in some measure to its 
first vision and aspiration—Augustine, Hildebrand, 
Francis, Wycliffe, Luther, Wesley, Keble, Maurice. 
Moreover, by the diffusion of Christian influence in the 
world, the list increases rapidly of those who, sometimes 
as professed Christians, sometimes as aliens from the 
Church, recall men to the meaning of their Christian 
faith. 

But this secularization of the Church gave an 
altogether new importance to its outward order. We 
tend to be impatient at serious discussion of such 
matters. It seems that if the Church is indeed the 
nucleus of that order of life whose attainment is the 
fulfillment of man’s destiny, such problems as those 
of regular or irregular ministries must be irrelevant.? 
Certainly they ought, if the Church were healthy, to 
occupy a very small amount of attention; but they 
are not irrelevant or unimportant. A healthy man 
pays little attention to his digestive or respiratory 
processes; but these are not unimportant even to the 
loftiest endeavors or the most heroic enterprises; and 
if health fails, they may call for close attention. 

The Church early began to suffer from one form 


1In the New Jerusalem the City, which stands for Life, is 1500 
miles high; its wall, which stands for boundaries of membership and 
order generally, is 216 feet high (Revelation xxi. 6, 17). 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH IQI 


of ill-health; it ought to be a society of people wholly 
surrendered to the Spirit of Christ. But many are 
members of it who are not thus surrendered. In 
view of the impossibility of estimating spiritual devo- 
tion, the Church must retain as members all who 
persist in claiming membership, unless they disqualify 
themselves by flagrant defiance of the Church’s 
requirements. It is not compatible with elementary 
Christian charity to exclude from the society which 
is the Spirit’s normal channel any who wish to be in- 
cluded and conform to the necessary requirements. 
But this involves a serious dilution of the primitive 
zeal, and there is urgent need for some firmly estab- 
lished means of keeping alive the knowledge of the 
end which the Church exists to serve. The Church 
has, in fact, established four such means: the Canon 
of Scripture; the Creeds; the Sacraments; the Ministry. 

Of these the first is incalculably the most important, 
and no considerable group of Christians has proposed 
to dispense with it. The selection of the Canonical 
Scriptures did not and does not imply any judgment 
by the Church on other writings; there may be others 
in which the Spirit as truly speaks or there may not; 
but He speaks here; and only those in which the 
experience of the Church has proved the presence and 
power of the Spirit shall be stamped as authoritative 
for the faith and hope and activity of the Church. In 
the Scriptures so ranked as authoritative the most 
conspicuous and pervasive characteristic is the un- 
varying proclamation of God’s absolute and universal 
sovereignty, covering the whole range of national 
policy, of social and economic order, and of personal 


192 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


life. Here is recorded the Gospel which Incarnate 
God proclaimed, the Gospel of the Kingdom or Sov- 
ereignty of God. Here is portrayed the life of the 
society which after the Ascension took the place of 
His Body, as that society appeared while none but 
sincere believers were drawn into it, striving for the 
universal fellowship, waiting for the perfected civiliza- 
tion which comes down out of Heaven from God. It 
is In the constant study of these writings, and espe- 
cially those of the New Testament, that the Church 
has its chief means of keeping alive in the minds of its 
members what it is to which they are called, and of 
enabling them to recover forgotten parts of their mis- 
sion in the world. 

The Creeds are summaries of the teaching of the 
Canonical Scriptures, drawn up originally, for the 
most part, to avert error rather than to define truth, 
but used in the experience of the Church as a means 
of proclaiming the pivotal points of its teaching. It 
is clear that formule agreed upon in the fourth and 
fifth centuries will not be exactly what theologians 
would compile in the twentieth. But the Church 
which formulated and accepted them was perfectly 
aware of the difference between experience and the 
rationalized account of it; the experience was what 
mattered; and with a marvelous completeness the 
temporary forms of thought and speculation were 
excluded. Unthinking persons sometimes ask how 
members of the Church to-day can consent to express 
their faith in the terms of Greek metaphysic; the 
answer is ‘‘We don’t; and we never did.” Apart 
from the single phrase ‘“‘of one substance” there is 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 193 


no Greek philosophy in the Creeds, and that phrase 
is so general that it binds no one to any particular 
scheme of philosophy. The great value of the Creeds 
is that they keep steadily before the mind of the 
Church and its members the whole articulated body 
of essential Christian doctrine; thus they tend to 
prevent an undue concentration of interest on any 
one point of doctrine or type of experience, and supply 
(like the Scriptures) a means of recovering lost or 
forgotten elements of Christian thought and life, and 
of restoring true balance and proportion.! 

Of sacraments there will be more to say later on. 
But it is here in place to speak of the Eucharist, 
wherein the members of the Body of Christ receive, 
under a form appointed by Himself, His Life, to unite 
them to each other in Him, and to impel them to the 
fulfillment of His purpose. Plainly in a world of 
many languages the unity of the Church is better 
expressed and fostered by a common act than it could 
ever be by forms of words. In Baptism and Holy 
Communion all can join with true unity of mind and 
will, realizing their oneness. But what most concerns 
us here is the emphasis which the act of reception at 
the Eucharist gives to the fundamental truth that the 
life of men as members of the Church, Christ’s Body, 
is not their achievement but God’s gift. No form 
could be devised which would more eloquently pro- 


*T cannot hold the Creeds exempt from criticism. It is not utterly 
impossible that error may have crept into them; I cannot attribute 
to them or to the Church any such authority as to rule out such a 
question in principle. But the authority behind them is so immense 
that I must regard such questions as academic only. 


194 CENTS DY TOE Re 


claim God’s priority and man’s dependence. He 
gives; we receive. As the Nativity was in no way 
due to the active causation of man’s will, though it 
was conditioned by the self-surrender of the Blessed 
Virgin to receive for mankind God’s gift of Himself, 
so here and always the Christian life is a supernatural 
life; we neither make it nor discover it; God gives 
it, we receive it. And this is the truth of chief im- 
portance to the whole life and purpose of the Church. 
The most seductive and the deadliest of all tempta- 
tions that come to man is the temptation to suppose 
that by himself he can achieve his destiny. It is 
false. Man can only be all that he is destined to be 
when God indwells him. Of this truth the Incarna- 
tion is the expression, and Holy Communion the 
perpetual reassertion. 

Closely connected with the Eucharist so conceived 
is the regular Ministry of the Church. The Church 
reserves to ministers duly ordained the right to “‘cele- 
brate” the Eucharist. This seems to me to be a most 
wise and important disciplinary provision.t The 
divine life offered in the Eucharist is the life of the 
divine Love (expressed in uttermost self-sacrifice— 
Body broken, Blood shed) of which the human coun- 
terpart is universal fellowship. What is secured by a 
universally recognized ministry is that at every ‘‘cele- 

1T do not think it is more than that. I think that if a layman 
“celebrates” with devout intention, he effects a real consecration, 
and any who receive devoutly at his hands receive the divine gift. 
None the less he acts wrongly, not only because he offends against an 
actual rule of the Church, but because the principle of his act is de- 


structive of the values which the ordered ministry exists to conserve, 
and which are an important element in a complete Christian experience. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH tos 


bration” the act is that of the whole Church through 
its accredited minister. The Bishop, in ordaining, 
acts in the name of the whole Church; the very mean- 
ing of his office is that he represents the Church 
Universal in one area—his diocese—and_ represents 
that area in the Church Universal. When, therefore, 
the episcopally ordained priest celebrates Holy Com- 
munion he does it by the commission of the whole 
Church; the worship is that of the whole Church, of 
all times and all places; it is indeed the service of the 
Holy Communion, the Communion of Saints. The 
worshiping congregation is not the individuals, few 
or many, who are assembled in the same building, 
but all faithful souls of every age and nation. We 
lift up our hearts to the Lord, and forthwith it is with 
Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven 
that we laud and magnify God’s glorious Name. 
No doubt this may be experienced by Christians 
who have dispensed with the historic Ministry. But 
in fact it is at least less prominent among them. The 
symbolism of a historic succession is a potent force in 
leading attention, often almost unconsciously, to this 
aspect of the Christian life; thus it fosters an ex- 
pectation which facilitates the actual experiences. 
And this is achieved in a manner harmonious with 
the central feature of Eucharistic worship—the God- 
givenness of the life in Christ. For the fact that no 
man may take upon himself to consecrate the Bread 
and Wine,! which become the vehicles of the Christ- 
1Lest this be misunderstood, let it be said that the most Free 


Churchmen assert this as strongly as any “Catholic,” but their order 
does not so fully express it or so forcibly call attention to it. 


196 CHRIST ‘THE’ FRUTH 


life to those who receive them, is an added reminder 
that man does not achieve or find that life, but God 
gives it to him in His own way. 

It is apparent that each of these four means to the 
end for which the Church exists helps to secure one 
or other, or both, of two great principles—Transcend- 
ence and Catholicity. These two go closely together. 
Experience gives no ground for hope that any religion 
emanating from human needs or aspirations or specu- 
lative inquiry can become a uniting power capable of 
binding all men and nations together in fellowship. 
If that is to be done at all, it must be by something 
which is similarly related to all, as only the act of a 
transcendent Power can be. It is the fact that in 
Christ God Himself intervened in human history, and 
that in the Church the Spirit of God and Christ is 
actively imparting the life of God to man, which gives 
any hope that mankind may be actually drawn to- 
gether, whether on this planet or elsewhere, in real- 
ized and universal fellowship. The first duty of the 
Church is therefore to maintain and insist upon the 
Transcendence of God and the gift of His life to men 
through Christ and the Spirit. 

But this must never be separated from the duty of 
the Church to labor, as it has been taught to pray, that 
God’s Name may be hallowed, His Kingdom come, and 
His Will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven. In the 
power of God it is to win this world for the Kingdom of 
God. The attainment by the Church of an established 
position in the world not only led to a dilution of its 
spiritual power, but also, and consequently, to some- 
thing like abandonment of its God-given mission. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 197 


The Church of the fifteenth century, when the 
secularization of the Church reached its climax, was 
not apparently doing much to bring about the fulfill- 
ment of the Lord’s Prayer. The chief witness to the 
spiritual deadness of the Church of that era is the fact 
that, when great spiritual power broke forth, it led 
(as later in Wesley) to a rending of the body that was 
designed to be its vehicle. And schisms tend to per- 
petuate themselves; for they encourage dispropor- 
tionate developments on both sides of the dividing 
line. Instead of the one fellowship of all types, where 
each contributes and each is held in check, the types 
are segregated and develop their own tendencies with- 
out the correction or modifying influence that others 
might afford. Thus the Church loses the opportunity 
of manifesting before the world the spirit of fellow- 
ship; but thus also the Church is prevented from 
delivering its whole message in the power and sanity 
of perfect balance. Before the Church can fully dis- 
charge its mission, it must recover its own organic 
unity. 

The secularization of the Church was mainly due, 
as we saw, to its increasing success. So long as it was 
persecuted it was relatively pure; none joined it then 
except in true sincerity. The very power of fellowship 
that thus arose in it gradually drew in others, who ~ 
were members of it, not with insincerity, but without 
the passion of sincerity which had alone been willing 
to face the persecution while persecution lasted. Thus 
the spiritual life was weakened, and the power of 
fellowship declined with it. But meanwhile the Spirit 
who works upon the world through the Church was 


198 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


beginning to permeate society even outside the 
Church. To-day the Holy Spirit speaks through 
many who stand aloof from the Church as truly as in 
the Church itself. But it remains true that the 
Church is His normal channel, and by the reading of 
the Scriptures, by the recital of the Creeds, by the 
maintenance of a historic ministry as a living symbol 
of God’s transcendence and man’s fellowship, by the 
witness to the same truths in the sacraments, the 
Church supplies the chief instruments of the Spirit’s 
age-long activity. 

The Church, then, is the direct outcome of the 
divine act of the Incarnation and the continuance of 
its principle. It is not constituted by separate in- 
dividuals deciding to come together. It consists of 
their actual union in response to the divine act. But, 
of course, this does not exclude the reality of a psycho- 
logical process in the matter. On the contrary, the 
emergence of the Church is the supreme example of 
a well-known psychological process. ‘‘The little 
Christian community believed that Jesus had ap- 
peared to certain of their number and had bidden 
them assemble in Jerusalem and wait together until 
some mysterious token of His presence and power 
should come. Just what this should be they probably 
did not picture—it was quite vague; but the feeling 
was strong that some strange, supernatural event was 
to occur. As the days went by in mutual influence, 
the feeling increased by geometrical progression. 
Each one made the suggestion to his neighbor and 
received it back two-fold. They held constant meet- 
ings in which they talked the matter over with each 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 199 


other, prayed over it, and thus induced a state of like- 
mindedness and mutual suggestibility which trans- 
formed them (in all reverence be it said) from a col- 
lection of individuals into a ‘psychological crowd.’ 
‘And when the day of Pentecost was fully come they 
were all with one accord in one place.’ Notice the 
distinct assertion of like-mindedness. And then came 
the expected. The clouds burst, the old inhibitions 
which may have bound them to their own lives were 
gone, everything was surrendered to the will of God, 
and a tide of emotion and devoted loyalty swept over 
them which they had never known before, the results 
of which will end only with human history.” ? But 
the power which drew them together, and held them 
together, and increased its authority over them 
through their mutual influence was the life of Jesus. 
Here, as elsewhere in the Christian religion, what we 
find is not a complete novelty, but the revelation (in 
virtue of the divine indwelling) of the true significance 
of a familiar characteristic_of human nature. The 
“crowd” is not the mere sum of its component in- 
dividuals; its temper is not the average of theirs. It 
is a collective unit, made one by the elimination for 
the moment of all in its members which is alien from 
its concern, and possessed of an eagerness in that 
concern greater than the individuals in isolation 
would feel. The concern may be loyalty, or patriot- 
ism, or revenge, or hatred; in the crowd it eliminates 
all else that might restrain or inhibit its expression. 
If the animating power is Christ, evoking loyalty as 
a means to the achievement of His purpose, then the 


1 Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, pp. 174, 175. 


200 CHRIST. THE TRUTH 


“crowd” becomes the Church, and is fitly called His 
Body. 
/ The ideal Church does not exist and never has 
VV existed; some day, here or elsewhere, it will exist; 
meanwhile its ‘‘members”’ are members also of ‘‘the 
world.”’ The Church only exists perfectly when all 
its “members” are utterly surrendered to Christ and 
united to Him. Some such there have been and are. 
Mostly the members of the Church are still in process 
of reaching that consummation and have by no means 
reached it yet. So the Church appears under the guise 
of a compromising institution; but the true Church 
is the Body of Christ, and consists of men so far as 
they are members of that Body. For this reason we 
ought not in strictness ever to speak of the failure of 
the Church; we should speak of the failure of Chris- 
tians. The failure, which is conspicuous enough in 
history, is a failure of Christian people to be thor- 
oughly Christian; in so far as they thus fail, the 
Church does not exist on the historic plane; where it 
exists, it triumphs, though its triumph, like the tri- 
umph of its Head, often appears to the world as failure 
till the passing of ages brings a true perspective. The 
true Church does not fail; but the true Church is still 
coming slowly into historic existence; that process is 
the meaning of History from the Incarnation on- 
wards; it consists both in the drawing of men and 
nations into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and in 
the completion of His work upon them in perfecting 
their surrender to Christ and their union with Him. 
It is clear that this experience of the Divine Spirit 
who pervades the fellowship, involves an extension of 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 201 


the conception of God similar to that involved by the 
Incarnation. God is known not only as before and 
above us—our Creator and King; not only as beside 
us and suffering for us—our Friend and Saviour; but 
also as amongst us and within us—Life of our life, and 
energy of our love. We may ‘‘quench the Spirit”; 
but if we have not by persistent self-will utterly extin- 
guished it, then there is always within us a spark of the 
Divine Fire, a principle of Holiness that never consents 
to sin. So the school-boy poet had already learned: ! 


From morn to midnight, all day through, 
T laugh and play as others do; 

I sin and chatter just the same 

As others with a different name; 


And all year long upon the stage 
I dance and tumble and do rage 
So furiously, I scarcely see 
The inner and eternal Me. 


I have a temple I do not 

Visit, a heart I have forgot, 

A self that I have never met, 

A secret shrine—and yet, and yet— 


This sanctuary of my soul 

Unwitting I keep white and whole, 
Unlatched and lit, if Thou should’st care 
To enter or to tarry there. 


With parted lips and outstretched hands 
And listening ears Thy servant stands, 
Call Thou early, call Thou late, 

To Thy great service dedicate. 


1 “Expectans Expectavi” in Marlborough and Other Poems, by C. 
H. Sorley. 


202 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


This is indeed no discovery of distinctively Chris- 
tian experience. The mystics have always known it. 
The discovery is that, when fully known, this ‘‘ God 
within my breast” is a source of true fellowship with 
others. The deepest experience of the Christian is no 
‘flight of the alone to the alone,”’ but a union in God, 
now known as Love, with Angels and Archangels and 
all the company of Heaven. The religious soul finds 
God within itself in all ages. But when God is re- 
vealed as Love, this can no longer be a solitary ex- 
perience; it becomes an incorporation into the fellow- 
ship of all those whom God loves and who in answer 
are beginning to love Him. 

It is sometimes said that men easily believe in the 
First and Second Persons of the Trinity, but cannot 
understand what is meant by the Third. If so, it 
only shows how deep is the gulf between their religion 
and their habitual thought. For the Third Person is 
the God with whom we are all in daily intercourse, 
and in whom almost every one to-day believes as a 
matter of experience, apart from all deliberate teach- 
ing. Our sense of right and wrong is already a fellow- 
ship with Him; our belief in a tendency of the world to 
improve is belief in the Holy Ghost. Democracy and 
Evolution have together made the thought of the 
Indwelling Spirit, urging us onward and upward, 
so natural that in fact many people accept it in a 
manner much too facile. When States were monarchi- 
cal, and political authority imposed itself on men 
from above, this aspect of the Divine Life was more 
difficult to grasp; but now that Democracy has taken 
possession and authority operates through men from 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHURCH 203 


within, all citizens joining to make the law which each 
must obey, the thought of God as working within 
men to conform them to the divine intention is easy, 
and is, in fact, familiar. It has been often emphasised 
in such a way as to set it in apparent opposition to the 
thought of the transcendent Creator, and this has 
given it an appearance of heterodoxy. But it is part 
of the traditional and necessary faith of Christendom. 
God is above; He is also within. 

As Jesus reveals the Father, so, too, He reveals the 
Spirit. The power that religious men have found 
within them, and that the unquenchable hope of man 
seeks in the movement of the world, is known, by 
those to whom the knowledge of Jesus Christ has 
come, as His power at work in their souls, in the 
fellowship of His disciples, and in the world. 


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CHAPTER X 
GOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION 


“Does God love, 
And will ye hold that truth against the world?” 
BROWNING. 


Our thought of God has been so revolutionized by 
the Life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, that we 
are inclined very often to suppose that to Him we owe 
the whole of it. It is true enough that we cannot 
overstate our debt to Him; but we may mis-state 
it, and we do this if we omit from our completed 
thought of God those elements which have their origin 
elsewhere and which He took for granted.!- When 
He taught men about God, they already meant some- 
thing by that Name. It will therefore be worth while 
before we consider the illumination brought by Christ 
to recapitulate what we know or believe concerning 
God apart from Him. This might be attempted in 
many ways; it will be appropriate to follow one that 
is germane to the general argument that is being 
worked out. 

As we rise in the scale of being from Thing through 
Brute to Person, we inevitably find suggested to our 
mind a perfection of Personality, which would be 
completely self-determining, completely “good” as 


+I made this mistake in some measure in Foundations, pp. 213, 214. 


208 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


wholly realizing the absolute values, and completely 
unified inwardly and outwardly.! Moreover, we find 
that such a Personal Being, if He exists, would supply 
what otherwise is desired but not forthcoming—an 
explanation of the universe as a whole.?, To assume 
the reality of such a Being is therefore scientifically 
sound; and this assumption (justifiable on purely 
intellectual grounds) finds confirmation in certain 
forms of experience which have just as good prima 
facie claims as any others to be regarded as veridical.* 
If theism were philosophically probable, religious 
experience would have to be explained away by what- 
ever processes the psychology of any epoch might 
prefer. If there were no such thing as religious ex- 
perience, Theism, though probable as a philosophy, 
would be at once too nebulous and too precarious to 
become the basis of a way of life. But religious ex- 
perience, far from being non-existent, is almost uni- 
versal; and Theism, far from being demonstrably 
false, is philosophically probable. The two together 
give us a reasonable and very practical assurance of 
the Being of God, that is of the reality of a Persenal 
Being who is completely self-determined or ‘‘free,”’ 
who is completely at one with Himself who is in com- 
plete apprehension and enjoyment of absolute value, 
and who is the source of all existence other than Him- 
self. ‘These qualities can be expressed in familiar 
terms; God is known as Spirit, constant, holy, and 
almighty. To these attributes yet another must be 
added, as we reflect that in His creative will all time 


1Cf. Chapter VI. * Cf. Chapter I. pp. 7-9. 
8 Cf, Chapter IIT. 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 209 


and all temporal process finds its source and unifying 
principle; He is Spirit, constant, holy, almighty, and 
eternal. 

Greek philosophers came near to such a conception 
by the way of thought; but the Supreme Being was 
for them but doubtfully personal. Plato indeed ex- 
claims, with reference perhaps to his own earlier ex- 
position of the Idea of Good, ‘‘Are we to believe that 
the most Real is deprived of motion and life and soul 
and mind?” ! And Aristotle uses personal terms of 
God. But a Being whose activity consists, even if 
His very self does not consist, of a “thinking of 
thought” * has a personality of a rather attenuated 
type. Philosophy never in fact goes beyond appre- 
hension of the formal principle of Deity; it never 
reaches, and from its own nature never can reach, 
intercourse with the living God. That is no matter 
for surprise; philosophy never reaches intercourse 
with living men either. Intercourse with God or with 
men is not the conclusion of an argument, but a mode 
of experience. Knowledge of the living God comes 
not from Greece or from philosophy but from Pales- 
tine and from religious experience. 

The classical instances of such experience are the 
Hebrew prophets and Psalmists; 3 among the prophets 

1 Sophist, 249 a. 

* Metaphysics, 1072 b, 14-30; 1074 b, 33-35. 

*T am sure the Prophets cannot, in isolation, support the immense 
metaphysical and theological edifice which Bishop Gore, in his Belief 
im God builds upon them. But such an edifice can (I think) be safely 
based on the religious experience of mankind, taken in conjunction 


with the philosophic grounds of Theism, and of that experience 
the Prophets are the most conspicuous examples. 


210 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


we must include the historians who wrote the story 
of their nation with a constant eye to the question— 
not ‘‘What here or there was the purpose of man?” 
but “‘What here or there was the purpose of God?” 
There is no need now to trace out the process of 
development in their understanding of the God with 
whom they were in communion; the result may be 
not unfairly expressed in the words already used: God 
is Spirit, constant, holy, almighty, and eternal, a 
Being of Majesty unapproachable, awful alike in 
greatness and in holiness, to fear whom is the begin- 
ning of wisdom. Such a belief Christ found in the 
world and took for granted. But the precise content 
of those terms He profoundly modified. 

In studying the difference which Christ has made 
in the conception of God, we have to attend to three 
points: first, His teaching about the Father; secondly, 
His manifestation of the Divine Nature in His own 
Life and Death; thirdly, the resultant power of God 
experienced by His disciples from Pentecost till now. 
The last we have already, to some extent, considered,} 
and we shall only need to glance at it briefly in this 
connection. 

We begin then with our Lord’s explicit teaching 
about God. He assumes, as has been said, the Hebrew 
faith in a living God, who is not only perfect in Him- 
self, but makes a difference to men and “‘takes sides.” ” 
The God of Israel was a God of righteousness; He 
did indeed long for the filial obedience of His people 
with a yearning love, as Hosea and some of the Psalm- 


1 Cf, Chapter VIII. 
2 Balfour, Theism and Humanism, p. 21. 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 2uI 


ists had tenderly depicted; but the culmination of 
His activity in History was usually conceived to be 
the establishment of righteousness by the punishment 
or even annihilation of the rebellious. We do well 
to distinguish the faith of the Old Testament as 
ethical Monotheism. Its God is chiefly King and 
Judge; He is the Moral Law personified and so made 
inescapably effective. 

Christ accepts at its full sublime height the right- 
eousness of God, but represents His method of vin- 
dicating it differently. It is as true for Him as for 
Amos that only by righteousness can we serve or 
please Him. Indeed, the righteousness that He de- 
mands is even more than the most punctilious observ- 
ance of the old Law;! it permeates all life, and 
extends beyond conduct to desire.2. But His method 
of bringing us to that righteousness is not that of 
Jehovah; or, if it be true that the various elements of 
the new method are also parts of the old, the change 
may be expressed as a change of relative emphasis so 
complete as to make the whole character of the method 
new. ‘he change is most apparent in the fact that 
King and Judge are titles never used, while the title 
Father becomes almost invariable. The application 
of this to God was, of course, no novelty; * but its 
prominence was a novelty, and still more so, clearly, 
was the emotional tone imparted to it. The very way 
in which the Lord uttered the word filled it with such 
significance that the actual Aramaic term was re- 
tained in a Greek narrative and a Greck letter; nothing 


1St. Matthew v. 20. 2 St. Matthew v. 27, 28. 
8 Cf. (e. g.) Isiah ix. 6; Ixiii. 16. 


212 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


else explains its presence there. Christ had spoken of, 
and to, God as Father in such a way as to open up an 
altogether new relationship on the part of men towards 
Him—a relationship which we may express by using 
the Lord’s own word, Abba, Father. 

The outstanding feature in the character of the 
Heavenly Father is an unlimited and undiscriminating 
love. His lavish bounty to all, whatever their attitude 
towards Him, is both the supreme mark of His pet- 
fection and the element in His perfection which we 
are especially bidden to reproduce in ourselves.” | 
About the novelty of this there can be no question; 
and this picture of God, with the ethical teaching 
based on it, is by the Lord Himself contrasted with 
the teaching given to the ancients; it is indeed its 
completion, not its destruction,® but, in completing, 
it also inverts the emphasis of the earlier teaching. 
Moreover, it gives rise to questions of special difficulty 
with regard to the righteousness of God, to which we 
must return when we have completed our survey of 
the elements specially characteristic of the Christian 
conception of God. The chief of these, as has been 
seen, is the thought of God as the all-loving Father. 

But while this love is undiscriminating in its bounty 
it is far from being weakly amiable. This same Father 
who makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good 
is one who is able to destroy both body and soul in 
hell. Nothing, not even the fall of a sparrow, happens 
apart from Him—a doctrine of comfort if we are living 


1 Cf. St. Mark xiv. 36; Galatians iv. 6; and especially Romans viii. 15. 
2 St. Matthew v. 43-48. 3 St. Matthew v. 17. 
4St. Matthew x. 28; St. Luke xii. 5. 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 213 


in accordance with His will, but not otherwise. More- 
over, the emphasis on the reality of men’s choice 
between the way of life and the way of death implies a 
conception of God as moral Lawgiver and Judge. 
There is certainly severity in Christ’s doctrine of God. 
It is the severity of Love, but the Love is very severe. 
Indeed, it is all the more terrible because of its total 
freedom from personal ill-will; that might be placated; 
but the antagonism of utter Love against selfishness 
can never be placated. If a man is selfish, and to the 
degiee in which a man is selfish, God is his antagonist. 
The Father does not desire his suffering or his destruc- 
' tion; He desires only to win him out of his selfishness. 
But for very love, knowing that love is life and selfish- 
ness is death, He shows relentless sternness towards 
those that are unloving. ‘His lord delivered him to 
the tormentors . . . so also shall my heavenly Father 
do unto you if ye forgive not each one his brother 
from your hearts.” ! 

It is noticeable, however, that, with the exception 
of the words just quoted, which occur in connection 
with a parable, our Lord does not speak of the Father 
as inflicting punishment by His own action. Judg- 
ment, indeed, is expressly stated to be a function of 
the Son, not of the Father; ? and, even so, it is not the 
purpose of the Son or His deliberate act; * rather it is 
the inevitable consequence of His coming among 
men with the offer of true life. To reject that offer 
is to be condemned. The Son is the Word or Self- 
expression of God, so that judgment appears to be 


1St. Matthew xviii. 34, 35. 2St. John v. 22. 
3 St: John i173 aii. 1s. 4St. John iii. 19. 


214 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


not the purpose or deliberate act of God, but the 
inevitable issue of the act in which He reveals Him- 
self. In this way we see how His activity in judg- 
ment is compatible with His undiscriminating Love.’ 
St. John penetrated to the very heart of His Master’s 
teaching about God when he summed it up in the 
reiterated phrase, ‘‘God is love.” 2. That is the funda- 
mental nature of the Being, already known as Spirit, 
constant, holy, almighty, and eternal, who is Himself 
the ground of the existence of all things and the ex- 
planation of the whole course of History. 

The teaching about God which is given by the Life 
and Death of Christ—His conduct as distinguished 
from His words—carries this further but makes no 
change in principle. ‘He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father”: ? and what we see is Love in action. 
The outstanding feature of His miracles is not the 
supernatural power displayed, but the fact that this 
power is used only for works of love and never for 
service of self. His call is to all men; by it they are 
sifted, and on those who cannot respond are directed 
denunciations made more terrible by their freedom 
from personal vindictiveness and ill-will. The love 
which He displays is holy, and is severe to the point 
of relentlessness against self-concern and _ self-com- 
placency; but it is sheer unalloyed love. When the 
self-spirit in its various forms—religious, financial, 
political—at last decides to destroy Him, His action 
still shows only love: ‘‘When He was reviled, He 

1 The whole subject of Judgment receives fuller treatment in the 


next chapter. 
27 John iv. 8, 16. 3 St. John xiv. g. 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 215 


reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened 
not.” ! God, as Christ reveals Him, acts as Christ 
taught us in the Sermon on the Mount to act; the 
Father in heaven is perfect in the way that we are 
bidden to be perfect.? 

But what becomes of that belief in God as the per- 
sonification and vindicator of the Moral Law, the 
counterpart of that sense of absolute obligation which 
we found to be the root element,in man’s religious 
experience? * If God loves the sinner as much as the 
saint, why should we trouble to be saints, if it is easier, 
as it often seems pleasanter, to be sinners? The 
questions irresistibly arise, as they arose in the minds 
of those who heard or read St. Paul.4 St. Paul’s” 
answer Is in effect that the question is purely academic 
and represents no reality. If the power of the knowl- 
edge of the love of God has taken possession of a man 
he cannot continue in sin, however forcibly a purely 
dialectical argument might recommend this course.° 
And that takes us to the root solution; but it 
does not make everything simple. Itis the mere 
truth that the Christian doctrine of God is liable 
to appear immoral to any man for whom it is a 
mere notion and has not become an experience. But 
even so, it only appears immoral; it is, in fact, the 
most highly moral and the most effectively moralizing 
of all actual or possible conceptions of God, as we 
shall now see. 


ta Peter it.23. 

?For a further discussion of the significance of the Passion see 
Chapter XIV. 

8 Chapter III. 4 Romans lil, 7, 8; vi. 1. 5 Romans vi. 2-11. 


216 CHRIST. THE TRUTH 


At the specifically moral level of thought and life, 
men think of themselves as distinct and separate 
individuals standing over against both God and each 
other; it is the level of “‘rights” and “duties,” of 
claims and counter-claims. At this level the goal of 
life appears to be a rendering of what is due to God 
and men. The Moral Law is the principle which 
regulates this process. So far as God is the personifi- 
cation and vindicator of the Moral Law, He may be 
expected to approve and reward those who render 
their dues, to condemn and to punish those who refuse. 
He is thus a postulate of the ethical consciousness, 
necessary to secure the actuality of the supreme ethical 
principle. But, in fact, He does not and cannot by 
this method succeed in that aim. Human conduct is 
rooted in motives; and the motives derive their power 
from the desires and emotions actually felt. If the 
aim is to make man, who is naturally selfish, truly just 
in his dealings, or, in other words, to convince him 
that he is only one among others of equal worth with 
himself, the method of rewards and punishments can 
never succeed; for it is an appeal to self-interest, 
which by that appeal is confirmed and strengthened. 
No; if selfish man is to be raised from self-concern to 
true justice it must be by something which makes no 
appeal to his self-interest, but cails him out altogether 
from his self-concern; it must be by the stimulation 
of his generosity; it must be by self-sacrifice calling 
for self-sacrifice In answer. 

Prophets and philosophers have indeed combined 
to establish the thought of God as primarily moral 
Law-giver and Judge. ‘‘Wilt thou not slay the 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 217 


wicked, O God?’ ! expresses exactly the mental 
attitude of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. And 
the resultant notion of God has a high disciplinary 
value. Fear of God’s wrath and punishment may 
keep wild impulses in check, though it can never really 
cleanse the character. But we cannot help noticing 
that both prophets and philosophers are mainly con- 
cerned with the punishment so richly deserved by 
some one else. This is, in fact, the root fallacy of 
much moral philosophy; it looks at legislation, divine 
or human, from outside, as designed to hold in check 
wicked persons other than the author and his readers. 
It may be true that those who vote for a law sentencing 
murderers to death are thinking to themselves, “I 
vote that any one who kills me shall be hanged”’; 
but the real meaning of the legislation is that through 
it every citizen says, “I will that if I ever kill a man 
I may be hanged.” The effectiveness of Law and its 
machinery of enforcement can only be appreciated by 
those who consider its application to themselves. It 
is natural, but very misleading, to think that there 


must be a God that those who injure or disgust us by \ 
their crimes may be punished or destroyed; the only _ 


thing that is profitable is for each man to consider the 
relation of God’s righteousness to himself. 

Now there is no clamor ringing down the ages from 
the souls of men that God will visit upon themselves 
the due punishment of their own sins. The clamor 
for a God who is first and foremost the vindicator 
of righteousness by punishment of the guilty is for 
one who will punish not the clamorers but their 


1 Psalm cxxxix. 19. 


~< 


218 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


enemies—the enemies of Israel, of the Church, of 
Great Britain (or Germany), as the case may be. 
That none the less this notion of God may be in its 
measure beneficial to those who hold it has been 
already said; but it can never do what it exists to do, 
for it cannot lift men out of themselves. 

It not only fails to reach its goal, but it creates new 
obstacles. Men tend to imitate the God in whom 
they believe. If they think of God as blessed in His 
boundless opportunity for enjoyment, their religion 
degrades them. It is a step forwards of infinite im- 
portance when men learn that God is righteous— 
‘“‘of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,” and “‘that 
will by no means clear the guilty.” ! Such a belief 
may raise men to the stage of honest dealing and 
trustworthiness; but as the God that it presents is in 
the last resort uncompassionate towards sinners, so 
will the character that it tends to form be hard and 
uncompassionate. ‘The man who holds this belief 
and lets it mold him will control his appetites and 
be honorable in conduct; but he will exact remorse- 
lessly the like conduct from others, and be ready to 
crush them at the dictate of his conscience if they 
disappoint him. He is confirmed in his self-centered- 
ness by the very type of righteousness at which he 
aims; by his very faith in God he is shut out from 
eternal life.” 

Now the God revealed in Christ meets all the needs 
indicated. If the God we worship is one who loves 
all men equally and indiscriminately, then every re- 


1 Habakkuk i. 13; Exodus xxxiv. 7. 
2 Cf. St. John xvii. 3; also Chapter XII. of this book. 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 219 


membrance of Him must rebuke our selfish character 
and all its works. I realize (a little) His love for me; 
but therein I realize his equal love for others. How 
can I injure those whom He loves? It is precisely 
the undiscriminating and apparently immoral univer- 
sality of His love which most of all lifts those who 
believe in Him out of the selfishness, which leads to 
crimes and injuries, up to the justice of action whose 
law is, “Do unto all men as you would that they 
should do unto you,” and to the justice of emotion and 
purpose whose law is, “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself.” 1 The morality of claims and counter- 
claims represents only a phase of men’s growth to that 
godlike love which is eternal life; in itself it is self- 
destructive, for it postulates the self-centeredness 
which its whole business is to overcome. The “fulfill- 
ment”’ of the law of claims and counterclaims is the law 
of love; the full truth and reality of the Jehovah of the 
Old Testament is the Father revealed by Jesus Christ.” 

The “‘nonresistance to evil’ which is enjoined 
upon us that we may be true children of the heavenly 
Father is no mere amiability which accepts an injury 
rather than face unpleasantness. It is the method of 
active love. ‘The method of love may be identified 
_with nonresistance. The first object of this policy is 
to make the other individual accept one’s judgment 
of his ultimate quality. If I meet wrath with a soft 
answer, it is because I know that the angry man has 
momentarily forgotten himself, and I propose to recall 


1 Hocking makes this point most effectively: cf. The Meaning of 
God in Human Experience, pp. 205, 482-83. 
2 St. Mathew v. 17. 


220 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


him to his senses. If I meet persistent misinterpreta- 
tion of my motives with an equally steady refusal to 
take offense, it is because I discern some seed of fair 
judgment in my critic, and I propose to give it a favor- 
able climate to grow in. My nonresistance, when it 
is valid, is never mere generosity and kindness: it is 
the attempt to make my opponent see in himself 
what I see in him, to lift him in sight of his own ulti- 
mate integrity.” ! So, too, the love of God, who 
makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and 
sends rain on the just and on the unjust, is not that 
merely amiable quality which shirks the responsibility 
of action and is properly called sentimentality; it is 
love active in redemption. 

The revelation gives us not only a doctrinal affr- 
mation of the divine love, but its very image. It is 
always by imagery that principles become powerful 
over conduct.” We are not left to conceive the all- 
embracing love of God as a general idea; we can call 
to mind the Agony and the Cross. There we see 
what selfishness in us means to God; and if evil means 
that to God, then God is not indifferent to evil. He 
displays His utter alienation from evil by showing us 
the pain that it inflicts on Him. So more than in 
any other way He rouses us from acquiescence in our 
own selfishness. By His refusal to discriminate in 
His love, and by His surrender of Himself for men’s 
evil passions to torment, He wins us to deserve His 
love and kills the evil passions in a degree that would 
be impossible by any activity of righteous force. 


1C. A. Bennett, A Philosophical Study of Mysticism, p. 141. 
2 Cf. Mens Creatrix, chap. xii. 


GOD AND THE INCARNATION 221 


If, however, we are too hardened in self-compla- 
cency to let the appeal of His love penetrate to our 
hearts (as may happen to respectable people though 
scarcely to notorious sinners), we cannot take selfish 
comfort in the thought that He loves us still. Because 
He loves us, and because that self-complacency is 
shutting us out from eternal life, He will let our self- 
ishness bring upon us its own fruit of disaster. In- 
carnate Love, on the very threshold of the Passion 
wherein that Love is supremely manifest, speaks of 
Himself as the stone which the builders rejected and 
is become the head of the corner: ‘‘whosoever shall 
fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever 
it shall fall, it will scatter him like dust.”’! He will 
smash and crush the hard shell of the self-contented 
soul, at any cost of mere pain and suffering; for though 
it is no pleasure to Him to see us suffer, however much 
we may deserve it, He also knows that any volume or 
poignancy of pain may be worth while if it gives the 
opportunity for love at last to penetrate and call forth 
love. The Gospel of God’s undiscriminating love has 
no syllable of consolation for the self-complacent, 
except in so far as it assures them that the aim of 
whatever judgment may befall them is to afford a 
new opportunity for living as they have no desire to 
live. 

For fellowship with God is the goal to which God 
calls us; it is fellowship with Love—utter, self-forget- 
ful, and self-giving Love. The selfish cannot reach it, 
except they be first changed into what they are not; 
and if they could, they would detest it. The Christian 

1St. Matthew xxi. 44; St. Luke xx. 18. 


222 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Heaven is no selfish reward for sufferings regretfully 
endured; it is fellowship with God. To go to Heaven 
means to be used up utterly in service; but that is also 
Hell for those in whom love has not yet conquered 
self. In either case it is the truth of all life, for it is 
the Life of God. If God has not won us by His love 
into spiritual fellowship with Himself, we are on the 
way to Hell; if He never does so win us, we must 
arrive there; ' if He do so win us we are in Heaven. 
All turns on our knowledge of and response to God 
who is Love. He is what He is and His world is what 
it is; we know or do not know. It is not scientific or 
doctrinal knowledge (eéevar) that is here in question, 
but the knowledge of personal acquaintance (yvdvat). 
“This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God, 
and Him whom thou sendedst, Jesus Christ.” ? 
‘This is the true God and eternal life; little children, 
keep yourselves from idols.” ? 


1The Catholic and Evangelical doctrine of Original Sin, which 
teaches that we are ‘“‘lost”’ unless we be redeemed is thus simply and 
exactly true, though its supposed historical basis is mythical. I use 
the word Heaven for final and assured fellowship with God, Hell for 
final and irrevocable alienation from Him. What the latter involves 
is further considered in the next chapter. 

2 St. John xvii. 3. $y John v. 20, 21. 


CHAPTER XI 
ETERNITY AND HISTORY 


“T saw Eternity the other night 
Like a great ring of pure and endless light, 
All calm as it was bright:— 
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years, 
Driven by the spheres, 
Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world 
And all her train were hurl’d.” 
Henry VAUGHAN. 


In a former chapter 1 we found that History must be 
capable of apprehension as a single whole, and that 
such an apprehension would be an experience deserv- 
ing the name Eternal. This word does not mean mere 
everlastingness; it means a unitary synthetic appre- 
hension of the whole process of Time and all that 
happens in it. What other conditions must be ful- 
filled to make such an apprehension possible we have 
no means of completely knowing; we can rise to such 
an apprehension of a short span of time, though even 
for that it seems that a selection of the events is 
necessary. When we grasp a period of History, it 
is a period already past, and our apprehension is 
limited to the outstanding events, or to what is closely 
connected with outstanding events or outstanding 
individuals. Art can take us further into the mystery; 


1 Chapter V. 


224 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


the tragedian can give us an experience of the present 
in the light of its own future. But that is only possible 
because the play is‘written before we read it or see it 
acted. Perhaps the poet or dramatist in act of writing 
comes nearer. He does not know in advance just 
what he is going to write. In finding the expression 
of its meaning he also finds that meaning itself; yet 
what he finds is his own thought. Mr. Bernard Shaw 
has told us that when he has once launched his “char- 
acters” into the drama he has no longer any control 
over their conduct; yet as he watches that conduct, 
sometimes apparently with great surprise, he is only 
observing the articulation of his own till then un- 
mastered thought, for the Dramatis Persone act 
according to their characters, which originated in his 
mind. Perhaps the relation of the creative artist to 
his work in the actual moment of creation is the 
closest analogy we have in our experience to the 
relation of the eternal Creator to the temporal world 
that He creates. If we conceive a father who is both 
the origin of his children’s being and a creative artist 
working out his purpose through the living and free 
wills of his children, we come still nearer in principle 
but are further off in actual experience, for no father 
has the full control over the living material in which 
he works that a poet or musician has over the words 
and sounds that he manipulates. In idea, as distinct 
from experience, we come nearest to what we want 
if we conceive.God as a Father who is a perfect artist 
in the art of education. He remains outside the 
process, though it originates in Him and He guides 
it; men are free, but through their very freedom he 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 225 


guides them to the fulfillment of His will. And still 
this is incomplete; for it omits the actual supra- 
temporal apprehension of the Time-process and all 
its details. We shall come back later to an inquiry 
into precisely this aspect of the matter; ! our concern 
now is with the effect upon our view of History caused 
by our knowledge not only that there is an Eternal 
Mind or Will but that this Mind or Will is such as is 
revealed in Christ. 

The theme is so vast that we must content ourselves 
with a few portions of it. Probably the discussion 
will be clearer for the insertion here of a list of the 
portions to be discussed. They are: (z) The scale 
of values, pp. 225-229; (2) the problem of accident, 
Ppp. 229-238; (3) the sovereignty of Love in human 
history, pp. 238-248; (4) the eschatological problem, 
pp. 248-252. 

1. The most obvious reaction of the eternal upon 
‘the temporal concerns the scale of values. On any 
theory it is plain that if anything exists at all which 
can be called eternal, and if we have any part or lot in 
it, it must be incomparably more important than 
what is only temporal. This would be true if “‘eter- 
nal” meant no more than ‘‘everlasting,” and we may 
take it in that sense for the moment to illustrate the 
point. The spiritual value of all eschatological doc- 
trine—Christian or other—lies just here. Our tem- 
poral life is set against a background of the everlasting. 
The pictures of the end of the world may vary; but 
it has an end. The elements may ‘‘melt with fervent 
heat” ? or the earth may become too cold to support 

1 Chapter XV. 2 2 Peter iii. 12. 


226 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


life, or at any rate such life as we know. Or, if there 
are blind stars in space, our planet may collide with 
one of these and be smashed to pieces. It makes no 
real difference whether what remains to come in 
man’s history on earth is Jong or short; it must end; 
and beyond that end the everlasting continues without 
end. In the years 1914-1918 many people supposed 
that nothing mattered more than the issue of the war; 
but if the earth had in those years collided with a 
blind star and been smashed, this would suddenly 
have mattered exactly and precisely not at all; but the 
spirit of self-devotion in the combatants, of care for 
justice, of charity towards enemies, would still have 
mattered exactly as much as before. If there is an 
eternal realm, then fellowship with the eternal Spirit 
and partnership in the eternal goods is for every living 
soul more urgently important than any temporal 
interest can be. The eternal Spirit is love; the eternal 
goods are love, joy, peace, loyalty, courage, wisdom, 
beauty, knowledge. These are the true goods; that 
man is truly successful, that nation is truly great, 
which has these things in abundance. 

Moreover, if History is the manifestation and 
working out of the eternal purpose, even temporal 
success must depend in the long run upon conformity 
with the eternal Mind and Will. If the world is the 
creation and expression of eternal love, then all selfish- 
ness is self-defeating. When we say that God is Love, 
we proclaim Love as the sovereign power in the uni- 
verse. If God is Love, then every purpose or policy 
which is selfish, based on the desire to gain rather than 
to serve, must end in catastrophe, for it is in opposi- 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 227 


tion to the supreme power in the universe; and every 
purpose or policy based on love, the desire to serve 
rather than to gain, is bound to reach success, through 
whatever sacrifices it may have to pass, because it is 
in alliance with the supreme power in the universe. 
Of course this does not mean that if our desire is to 
serve we shall acquire gain; it means that if our desire 
is to serve, we shall be enabled to serve, which is to 
“enter into the joy of the Lord.” God is love; the 
world is God’s world; there is no conceivable combina- 
tion of circumstances in which it is impossible to show 
love. We may suffer as we do it; but if the real spirit 
of love is in us that will be no disappointment; we 
shall rejoice that we are counted worthy to suffer. 

All this is more familiar as homiletics than as 
philosophy; my contention is that it is sound philos- 
ophy. Philosophers seek to know the nature of 
reality and the right way to live; Christianity offers 
the answer to both inquiries in one word—Love; 
and if we accept the hypothesis, it works both in 
theory and in practice, in the sense, not that it makes 
all clear, but that it progressively, if never completely, 
reduces chaos to order. That statement can only be 
proved as regards practice by actual experimenting; 
how the Christian answer works in theory we must 
now consider. 

The chief intellectual difficulty hindering people 
from accepting Christianity is the difficulty of tracing 
divine love in the actual history of the universe as 
known to us. The history of the animal creation 
suggests a callous indifference to apparently fruitless 
suffering in the “‘Determiner of Destiny.” But this 


228 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


first impression is ill-founded. No doubt there is 
suffering, alike from fear and from injury, in the 
animal world. But there seems no reason to doubt 
that the animal world is on the whole thoroughly 
happy. It is only when we read into the experience 
of animals our own capacity for memory and anticipa- 
tion that we think of jungle-life (for example) as 
mainly unhappy. [Even if the animal creation were 
(as perhaps it is) a final stage of development, to be 
justified in itself or not at all, it would not afford a 
valid argument against the goodness of the Creator. 
Moreover, in the apparently cruel struggle for exist- 
ence, those kinds which are able to combine and co- 
operate are more successful than others. Mutual 
aid rather than naked competition is the law of prog- 
ress in the animal world; and mutual aid, when it 
becomes self-conscious, is an expression of love. 

From our point of view, however, the animal world 
is part of one great whole which finds its fullest ex- 
pression in Man and his history. This does not mean 
that the other animal species are necessarily or even 
probably developing towards self-consciousness and 
intelligence as we know them in Man. For that there 
is no evidence; Bergson’s theory of a bifurcation of 
evolution, one line leading to a great development of 
“intelligence” the other to a similar development of 
‘‘instinct,” has, I believe, far more foundation in the 
facts,’ though of course it is no more than a specula- 
tion. It is not suggested that the problem of animal 
life can be solved by a consideration of what animal 
life is going to turn into; what is suggested is that 

1 Bergson, L’ Evolution créatrice, pp. 146-164, specially 146 and 152. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 229 


animal life supplies only one part of an indivisible 
problem, and that if broadly and on the whole it is 
compatible with a theory which fits the facts of human 
existence, that, considering how little we know of 
animal life from the inside, we are bound to accept as 
_ enough. 

2. As we turn to Man and his History we are at 
first driven back to a stage logically and chronologi- 
cally prior to animal life. Man lives in a world which 
he learns increasingly to control; but there is no ex- 
pectation that he will ever control it altogether, or 
that he is likely to become master of earthquakes and 
eruptions; and even if he should learn the laws govern- 
ing such events enough to adapt his conduct and 
avoid catastrophe, he will still be liable to accidents 
of a thousand kinds; and, anyhow, the knowledge of 
the future cannot now heal the calamities of the past. 
From the outset we find that Man lives in a world 
liable at any moment to devastate his hopes by sheer 
accident. How can it be said that such a world reveals 
the eternal Love? 

The problem is real enough at the best; but it has 
been made worse by the superstitious habit of attribut- 
ing to a special act of divine volition any event which 
is not easily explained by reference to some human 
will or by the scientific knowledge available at the 
time. This superstition, like all others, rests on a true 
conviction; in this case it is the conviction that Will 
is the only true cause or explanation of anything. 
The superstition is to suppose that the Will of God 
acts more completely in Nature than in Spirit (such 
as Man). All that exists is the self-utterance of God’s 


ae 


230 GEIRIS De Luke Leck 


Will: His fullest and completest utterance was through 
Human Nature, which He assumed at His Incarna- 
tion. No doubt in mankind generally there is a 
partial frustration of His purpose through the self- 
centeredness of the individual wills of men. But it 
remains true that the human will is a more adequate 
instrument of the Divine Will than any natural force 
can be. We can trace the activity of God far more 
truly in the lives of men than in the occurrences of 
Nature. If that is realized, we shall at least. be de- 
livered from the supposition that calamities due to 
accident, whether small or great, are due to the act of 
God (as insurance offices say) except in the sense that 
He has created the universe and all things within it. 

What, after all, do we mean by an ‘“‘accident”’ ? 
The word seems to stand for an event of which the 
causes have no connection with the causes of the 
human conduct affected by it. A land-slip takes 
place in an uninhabited region; it is not usually called 
an accident. A land-slip takes place in a popular 
watering-place and overwhelms a number of holiday- 
makers; it is a terrible accident. An event is only an 
accident if it crosses some human interest or purpose; 
but also it must be due to nonhuman action. An 
explosion in war destroys a number of men; but if it 
was due to a mine laid by the enemy it is not an acci- 
dent (though the deaths caused are called ‘‘cas- 
ualties”’). An explosion due to volcanic eruption 
destroys a number of men; no one hesitates to call this 
an accident. In short an accident is an interference 
with human purposes due to the action of natural 
forces, known or unknown, but incalculable in their 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 231 


bearing on the purpose interfered with. An accident 
therefore is merely a particular illustration of the fact 
that all human purposes have to be fulfilled in a world 
which, as a whole, is subject to general laws. There is 
no reason to attribute any particular accident to a 
special act of the Divine Will; the explanation les in 
the convergence of two independent lines of casual 
action. If when I am walking down the street a 
chimney-pot is blown down, hits me on the head and 
kills me, that does not prove that God decided to end 
my terrestrial existence on that day and took this 
means of doing so. The wind that knocked down the 
chimney-pot was due to causes traceable in the last 
resort to the nebula in which the solar system orig- 
inated. The looseness of the chimney-pot was due 
(perhaps) to neglect on the part of a builder, which 


had its own moral explanation in his family history. < 


My presence was due to my pursuit of my ordinary 
duties. No special act of God is involved except in so 
far as He did not work a miracle to save me when 
these three independent lines of causation converged 
to the production of the ‘‘accident.”’ If there are to be 
general laws at all, there must be accidents, unless 
there is to be a miracle every time an accident would 
otherwise occur. 

Now there can be no doubt about the moral value 
of general laws. It is only on the basis of an assumed 
fixity in Nature that any purpose can be formed at all. 
Unless we have reasonable certainty that the sun will 
rise to-morrow, that the Law of Gravitation will still 
be valid (or, at least, as valid as it is now), that food 
will still nourish, and speech still convey thought, we 


f- a 
-s 


232 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


cannot set out to order the present with a view to the 
future; and this is the basis of all intelligent choice, 
and therefore of all purpose and morality. It is not 
fatal to morality that the world may end to-morrow— 
perhaps by an astronomical ‘‘accident”’; but it would 
be fatal to morality if the world might continue to 
exist, but react on novel and unpredictable principles. 
The fixity of the Laws of Nature is no evidence against 
the Love of God; on the contrary, it is strictly com- 
patible with it, inasmuch as it supplies the only basis 
on which mankind could set out upon the moral life 
whereby primarily man’s fellowship with God and 
service to Him is achieved. 

But why, if He is Love, does He not intervene to 
save His children from the occasional evils resulting 
from the action of those fixed laws? Could He not 
either divert the chimney-pot or breathe into my 
subconscious mind a suggestion that would prevent 
my walking where it was about to fall? People seldom 


' ask these questions with reference to accidents that 


might befall themselves; but they ask them when 
their friends are concerned; and they pray that their 
friends may be preserved from such accidents. Is 
this reasonable? If not, is it because God cannot, or 
because He will not, intervene? In any case, what 
becomes of omnipotent Love? 

I would answer first that God certainly can inter- 
vene and (moreover) that, in my belief, He often does; 
this cannot be proved, and it would be unsound to base 
any general philosophic view upon this conviction. 
The experience of religious people is, however, decisive 
to any one who accepts the religious hypothesis. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 233 


People who take care to keep their devotional life 
fresh and vigorous find repeatedly that they are 
“‘suided’’ to act or speak in ways the value of which 
is only afterwards appreciated. To maintain spiritual 
contact with God produces, it would seem, a sensitive- 
ness to the Divine Will which usually shows itself 
only in the actions which it prompts.' Personally 
I believe that a similar result may be produced by 
intercession. When I prayed for the safety of my 
friends during the Great War, I did not suppose that 
God would deflect bullets to save them, but I did and 
do believe that He might see fit to prompt them to 
some apparently ‘“‘accidental’”) movement which 
would save them. The impulse to pray is justified if 
such a thing is even possible. 

But it remains true that even if there are instances 
of such intervention, they are rare; and perhaps they 
increase rather than diminish the difficulty. For if 
God ever acts so, why does He not act so always? 
The argument that the Divine Love is compatible 
with accidents and casualties must follow other lines 
than these. And it is the reaction of Eternity on 
History which provides the cogency of the argument. 

Of primary importance is the scale of values. We 


1 Personal testimony is the most appropriate support of such a 
statement. I have found that at times when I have been taking 
due trouble about my own devotional life I have frequently felt an 
unreasoned impulse to go and see some one whom (as it turned out) 
I was able to help considerably. I have also noticed that if I get slack 
about my prayers, such coincidences cease. Preachers who pray over 
their sermons often find that some sentence which they doubtfully 
insert, or utter on the spur of the moment, is exactly calculated to 
meet the spiritual need of some one in the congregation. 


234 CHRIST “THE "TRUTH 


can see this if we trace the scale implied by certain 
popular difficulties. ‘‘If A prays for his boy at the 
front, and B does not, is A’s boy more likely than B’s 
boy to come through safe? If he is not, what was the 
use of praying? If he is, it is unfair to B’s boy that 
he should suffer for his father’s unbelief or neglect.” 
I could not myself say, in round terms, that A’s boy 
is more likely to come through safe; I should say that 
the father’s prayer would win him increased strength 
for whatever might come to him, and further, that, 
if it were really best for him and all concerned that he 
should come home safe, the prayer might be the con- 
dition needed for the realization of this best result.? 
But, anyhow, there is no unfairness to B’s boy, unless 
it is assumed that bodily death is always a great evil 
to him who dies; and if we once learn to see terrestrial 
life on the background of eternity this assumption is 
found to be baseless. The evil of war casualties is 
not the supposed injury done to those who die, but 
the loss to those who remain alive—loss of friends and 
loss of useful citizens. It is worth mentioning, perhaps, 
that the supposed ‘‘unfairness” in the objector’s, 
complaint is merely part of the general fact of human 
influence. If the religious theory of life is right, B’s 
boy must suffer for his father’s unbelief or negligence 
of prayer whether or not he remains physically alive 
when danger is over. We are all gainers or losers by 
the quality of our homes in childhood. Part of the 
theological difficulty about ‘‘accidents”’ is due to the 
acquiescence in a scale of values which is incompatible 


1Qn the general grounds for Prayer and Intercession see Chapter 
XIII. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 235 


with any vivid realization of the eternal background of 
our temporal history. 

But only part of it can be so accounted for. How 
can a loving God remain inactive while accidents 
which He could prevent bring heart-breaking grief 
to His children? We must now separate accidents in 
the strict sense from events, like wars, which are due 
to human wills. Is the Japanese earthquake com- 
patible with the Love of God? Yes, if it is true that 
the whole purpose of human history is to fashion 
souls, and a great fellowship of souls, knit together 
in mutual love through common participation in the 
Eternal love. That is the goal of human history 
according to the Christian scheme; ! and to it we are 
moving in our process of evolution from our animal 
ancestry. The crucial problem of human life is to 
acquire detachment from the present and to become 
rooted in the Eternal. In the education necessary 
for this, no influence is so powerful as the discipline 
of accident. If God in fact intervened on every 
occasion, or on many occasions, when apart from His 
action the normal process of events would lead to a 
calamitous ‘‘accident,” it may be doubted if the 
spiritual side of human nature would ever be able to 
assert itself. For such beings as, in fact, we are, the 
knowledge that our earthly life is precarious offers an 
invaluable reminder that the highest values are not 
bound up with earthly life at all. ‘Accident,’ speak- 
ing broadly, is one of the most effective forces for the 
spiritualizing of men. 

When, therefore, some precious life is cut off by 

1 Cf, for instance the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. 


\ 


f 


236 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


an accident, or when widespread devastation is 
caused, we should not say “‘Why does God choose to 
do this?” God does not “choose to do this”; what 
God chooses is to create a world to which “this” is 
incidental. And it is good for us all that He does. 
But while He does not specifically choose that the 
accident should occur, He is ready to support both 
those who die and those who remain on earth with the 
experience of His loving presence: He does not leave 
them merely in the grip of a mechanical universe 
grinding out its causal sequences, but by means of all 
that comes gives His children a new motive to find 
Himself. Of course this argument is peculiarly irritat- 
ing to the atheist or agnostic. The Christian finds 
confirmation of his faith whatever happens. If he has 
earthly happiness, he turns to God with thanksgiving; 
if he has earthly sorrow, he turns with renewed eager- 
ness to the Eternal Love, and gives thanks for what 
impelled him thither once more. In all things that 
happen he finds God, not because he traces the eternal 
purpose in an infinite number of ‘‘particular provi- 
dences,”’ but because he has learned how to make all 
temporal experience direct his attention to its eternal 
background. Consequently he “gives thanks at all 
times for all things,” ! because he has found it literally 
true that ‘‘all things work together for good to them 
that love God.” 2 And that is what must happen if 
God is Creator. ‘‘Good” is service and love of God; 
those who love and serve Him find in all that happens 
occasion to love and serve Him more. For what 
ever comes, comes, either by His specific choice or 


1 Ephesians v. 20. 2 Romans viii. 28. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 237 


by operation of His perpetual purpose, from His 
hand. 

“But is He to be called Love who lets us suffer so 
incredibly that we may learn to love Him? Is not 
this rather a monstrous Egoism set up on the Throne 
of the universe? If a man killed my friend, or let 
him die, to make me love him, I should call him cruel, 
and certainly he could not in that way make me love 
him. Why is it not so with God? If he lets my friend 
die by an accident, is He not cruel? Shall I not rather 
defy than love Him, even though He put forth His 
omnipotence to destroy me?”’ ; 

The question is natural enough, and the poets of a 
revolution, such as Shelley and Byron, have clothed 
it in magnificent rhetoric. But it is only natural if 
we are thinking of God as another individual Person 
standing to us in the same relationship as other people 
do. But He is not that. He is Himself the true 
Life of our life; the Love which is His Nature is the 
true energy of our souls. He is within us as well as 
without. We defy ourselves when we defy Him.—~ 
The Eternal Love which He calls us to understand 
and return is not other than our love for the friend 
who dies. The love, wherewith we love, is the Holy 
Ghost. The call to a deeper love of God which comes 
through the death of a friend is not the call to forget 
the friend and to love God instead; it is a call to 
realize more deeply what our love for our friend really 
was and is—an activity of God in us—and to rise 
from the temporal relationship of a “‘natural”’ friend- 
ship to an apprehension of the Eternal Love in which 
that friendship lives on in spite of the friend’s death. 


238 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


In those who are thus able to rise by sorrow to eternal 
joy, the familiar words of the Prayer Book Psalter are 
fulfilled; they ‘‘going through the vale of misery use 
it for a well, and the pools are filled with water.” ! 
Of entry into the realization of Eternal Love, wherein 
all earthly loves are reaffirmed and consecrated, all 
earthly sorrows and all earthly joys can be true sacra- 
ments. | 
3. We have already spoken of wars, and thus 
introduced the problem which arises not from the 
impact of natural forces upon human purposes, but 
from the history which is constituted by those pur- 
poses themselves. For the miseries that are due to 
“historic causes’? we have begun already to see the 
explanation. The Love of God desires for us what is 
best for us, which is partnership in Itself; it does not 
desire for us that we should be happy and comfortable 
while we shut out our own highest good. Therefore 
persistence in selfishness spells misery. The best 
thing of all cannot be merely given to us or forced upon 
us; it is only apprehensible by an act of choice; until 
we choose we cannot have it; and, being selfish, we do 
not choose. But in this sphere the Eternal makes 
His sovereignty over the temporal felt through Judg- 
ment. We have seen already that the course of His- 
tory, quite apart from all theology, points to universal 


1 Psalm Ixxxiv. 6; cf. Inge, Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion, 
pp. 88, 89; “Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries 
of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even 
happy love. Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, 
more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal 
world; it has proved itself stronger than death.” 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 239 


fellowship as its own goal.!. That is the historic ex- 
pression of Love, which we learn from Christ is the 
Sovereign Principle of existence. As we watch the 
course of History from another point of view we see 
this Eternal Principle asserting its sovereignty in the 
catastrophes to which men come by relying on prin- 
ciples at variance with it. 

Our Lord spoke of His “‘Coming”’; and His disci- 
ples thought of it as a Return or “Second Coming.” 
Their minds were full of the expectation of specific 
Days of the Lord, when God would vindicate His 
authority by the punishment or destruction of all 
who defied it. But God seeks no such triumph. Men 
may involve themselves in destruction; His act is 
always for salvation. So Christ spoke of His Coming 
as something very imminent, and before the High 
Priest He spoke of it as then and there accomplished: 
from that moment ? Daniel’s prophecy was fulfilled, 
and the Son of Man was seated on the right hand of 
power. To reveal in uttermost perfection the Eternal 
Love was to clothe it with the only power appropriate 
to it. From then till now, God ‘“‘reigns from the 
Tree.” The prophecy has been progressively fulfilled. 
The writer of the Apocalypse exactly expresses the 
facts. ‘He cometh with the clouds”; that is present; 
from the moment of the Passion to the consummation 
of history He works by the sovereign power of love; 
‘‘and every eye shall see Him”; that is future; for the 
universal apprehension of His sovereignty is still to 
come. 


1 Cf. Chapter V. 
2dr apt, St. Matthew xxvi. 64; Grd TOU vov, St. Luke xxiii. 69. 


<< 


240 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


But there is Judgment, and it is traceable. Our 
Lord plainly spoke of His own coming in Judgment; 
and he intertwined it, if the records are to be trusted, 
with predictions of the Fall of Jerusalem. That was 
to be the next illustration in history of the divine 
Judgment which is committed by the Father to the 
Son. Jerusalem fell for the same reason that it re- 
jected Christ; it fell through its nationalistic ambition. 
Called to a unique spiritual destiny as the trustees for 
the knowledge of the true God, the Jews yet preferred 
to cling to their secular and worldly ambitions. That 
preference led to their rejection of Christ; it also led 
to their extinction, for it made them a nuisance to 
imperial Rome, which was not tolerant of nuisances. 
So Christ read in their rejection of Himself their 
coming doom. “If thou hadst known, in this thy 
day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace. 
But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days 
shall come upon thee when thine enemies shall cast 
up a bank about thee and compass thee round, and 
keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the 
ground and thy children within thee; and they shall 
not leave in thee one stone upon another; because 
thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” + This 
does not mean that God, offended at an outrage to 
His dignity, would wipe out the arrogant city in a 
petulant irritation. Nonresentment against injuries 
is the quality by which we are to show that we are His 
children. But the failure of the Jews at the crisis of 
their destiny showed how deeply ingrained was the 
quality that led to it, and so revealed the fate to which 

1St. Luke xix. 42-44. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 241 


that quality must lead. And when Jerusalem fell for 
a characteristic which involved repudiation of Christ, 
the Son of Man came in Judgment. So it was when 
the turn of Rome itself came. Rome fell largely 
because its social fabric rested increasingly on slavery; 
slavery is contrary to the truth about human nature 
as it is revealed in Christ; and when Rome fell because 
it based its civilization on a principle alien from the 
mind of Christ, the Son of Man came in Judgtaent. 
So it was when medieval Europe broke up, because 
the Church in its effort to make the world God’s 
Kingdom had surrendered to the world by adopting 
its methods and some even of its vices. So it was 
when the French Revolution overthrew an order 
which persisted in maintaining unjust privileges. 
So it was in r914 when a civilization largely based on 
greed was wrecked, and that State which had made 
greed for power an avowed principle of action was 
stripped of all power. At each one of these great 
moments the authority of Christ was vindicated by 
the catastrophe in which its rejection issued. Love 
is shown to be King by the fact that what offends 
against love destroys itself. In that sense, and to 
that extent, the Kingdom of God is now and always 
has been a present fact. From the authority of the 
Creator’s law there is throughout the creation no 
escape. 

But that is not a full actualization of the Kingdom 
or Sovereignty of God. Law is vindicated when those 
who break it are punished; but it is not the aim of 
Law or the Legislator that men should suffer punish- 
ment; the aim is that men may not commit offenses. 


242 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Consequently we are bidden to pray that God’s 
kingdom may come. Mainly this further coming of 
His kingdom consists in the establishment of His 
authority in men’s lives by the surrender of their 
hearts and wills to the appeal of His love. But as 
there are ways of life that incur the consequences in 
which we read His judgment on those ways of life, 
so we naturally seek for principles in accordance with 
which we may order life so as to express the Mind 
of Christ. It may suffice here to give four such prin- 
ciples, with some slight suggestions for their applica- 
tion.? 

First and fundamental is that principle which in 
' politics is called Liberty, but which is better repre- 
sented by such a phrase as the Sacredness of Person- 
ality. This lies at the root of all our Lord’s teaching 
about men, and all His dealing with men. It follows 
from the thought that God is the Father of every soul; 
it is required by the fact that God is Love, and desires 
the love of His children. The personality of the child 
of God whose love God Himself desires is certainly a 
sacred thing. We turn to application. Does our 
provision of education at present correspond with a 
belief in the sacredness of the personality of every 
citizen? * Or we turn to industry and economics. 
The text-books of Political Economy which held the 
field in the nineteenth century upheld what is called 
the ‘‘commodity view of Labor.” This is the doctrine 


1 For a fuller statement see the Reports presented to the Conference 
on Christian Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, Birmingham, 1924 
(Copec Reports, Longmans). 

* Cf. the chapter on “‘Education” in Mens Creatrix. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 243 


that Labor should be treated like a commodity, sold 
as dear as possible and bought as cheap as possible. 
But Labor either is not a commodity at all, or else it 
is a unique kind of commodity; for it is not separable 
from the Laborer. If I buy a pair of boots, I do not 
buy the bootmaker. But if I want to obtain a man’s 
Labor, I must have the man; I must have both his 
body and his mind. When I hire (or buy for a spec- 
ified period) a man’s labor, I hire fim. If then I 
treat Labor as a commodity, I am, so far, treating the 
Laborer as a thing, not as a Person. Our industrial 
system to-day does not rest on the commodity view 
of Labor; a multitude of factors have come in to 
modify it. But we have not yet explicitly repudiated 
it or adopted another principle in its place. 

This first principle is balanced by the second, which 
is the Reality of Membership. If all are children of 
one Father, all are members of one family. ‘There- 
fore no individual is entitled to use his liberty for his 
own advantage only, but should exercise it in the 
spirit of membership or fellowship. We may apply 
this also to Industry. It is sometimes urged that 
industry should be codperation for public service, 
as if this were a remote and almost unattainable ideal. 
But industry never is anything else. Incidentally it 
is very bad theology to suggest that the Mind of Christ 
conceives only what is utopian; the conception of 
anything in the Mind of Christ is the reality of that 
thing. Consider the English Cotton Industry. It 
is almost entirely located in Lancashire. But the 
cotton is not grown in Lancashire. It is grown in 
America or in Africa by one set of people; it is shipped 


244 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


across the sea by other people; it goes through in- 
numerable processes in the mills and sheds of Lan- 
cashire; then the finished product reaches the shops 
and is sold to the consumer. The whole process goes 
on simply and solely because the public wants cotton 
goods; it exists for public service. And it is codpera- 
tive in its very nature. All the groups of people who 
take charge of the processes set out above are co- 
operating, whether they know it or not. And at 
every stage there is codperation of the three factors 
—Capital, Management, and Labor. On the day 
that the codperation stops, the industry stops. In- 
dustry zs codperation for public service. If, then, the 
people who are engaged in it work it as if it were com- 
petition for private profit, of course it goes wrong. 
But our thought must be concrete, not abstract. 
Competition and Codéperation are logical opposites, 
but they are not Incompatibles. Consider a game of 
football. If it is Rugby football, there will be thirty 
players; and if it is a real game, all the thirty will be 
codperating for the fun of the game. The form of 
their codperation is for fifteen to compete against the 
other fifteen. Each team consists of fifteen players 
who codperate to compete effectively against the 
other team. Inside each team, every player may be 
competing against all the rest to be the best codpera- 
tor in competing against the other team for the co- 
operative fun of the game. Codperation and com- 
petition may be inextricably intertwined. But it 
makes all the difference which is uppermost—which 
exercises a check upon the other. If you have the 
codperative spirit uppermost, you have good sports- 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 245 


men, who would rather be beaten in a good game than 
win in a bad one; but if the competitive spirit is upper- 
most, you have men who play only to win, and will 
do any dirty trick that the referee will let them. So in 
industry our need is a full and frank recognition that 
industry is in its own nature fundamentally codpera- 
tive, so that all competition within it is kept in check 
by the coédperative spirit and purpose. 

The third principle which follows from these two 
is the Duty of Service. If I am to use my freedom 
in the spirit of membership in the community, it 


follows that I fulfill my own destiny when I make my 


life an act of service. Here it will suffice for illustra- 
tion to refer again to the public provision for Educa- 
tion, and the motive which public opinion commonly 
supposes to be the driving force of Education and the 
basis of all desire for it. It cannot be denied that the 
notion of self-advancement—whether to spheres of 
service or not—plays a larger part here than Christian 
principle would allow. In particular the rising genera- 
tion is very inadequately trained to think of the trade 
or profession whereby daily bread is to be earned as 
the chief sphere of service; yet if every one exercised 
his trade or profession in that spirit half our problems 
would be solved. 

This leads us on to the fourth principle, which is 
the most distinctive of the Christian scheme—the 
Power of Sacrifice. What is the driving power of 
progress? The natural man thinks it can be accom- 
plished by force. But force alone achieves nothing 
positive, because it does not convert heart or will. 
Force has its place. It is right to use force in order 


246 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


to prevent other force from doing positive harm. Such 
is the use of force represented by the police. But 
this function of force is purely negative. It prevents 
harm from being done, and so leaves the way open 
for real .progress. ‘This comes not by force but by 
sacrifice. There are in the world two kinds of Vic- 
tory. One is the Victory of Pride or Self-assertion, 
which consists in Imposing on the conquered the will 
of the conqueror. In such victory there is no peace; 
there is the bitterness of defeat, the hope of revenge, 
the renewal of the conflict when resources permit. 
And there is the Victory of Love—the only kind of 
victory with which God is content. Here there is no 
defeated party, for the victory consists in the conver- 
sion of enemies into friends. ‘The means to this vic- 
tory is not force, but sacrifice. I should be ready to 
affirm that so far as real progress has been won by 
means of strikes, it has never been really due to the 
inconvenience caused to employers or to the public, 
but to the sympathy called out by the endurance of 
the strikers, and (still more) to a realization of the 
justice of their cause to which their endurance may 
call attention. We may apply this principle, and the 
last, to international questions. How far do we think 
of our national greatness as consisting in the power to 
dictate to other countries, and how far as consisting in 
service rendered to mankind even at loss to ourselves? 

‘For the community which we are freely to serve is, 
in the last resort, the human race itself. But we 
cannot set ourselves to serve mankind directly. We 
must give our service In a narrower community, but 

1 And by the British and French armies in 1914. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 247 


use the wider loyalty to check the narrower, never so 
serving family as to injure country, never so serving 
country as to injure mankind. It is thus, and by 
application of such unchanging principles as have been 
described to the changing conditions of successive 
generations, that we can bring eternity into history, 
and work, as we pray, for the coming of God’s perfect 
sovereignty. 

For the transformation of life in accordance with 
such principles the chief requirement is not legislation 
by the State but a true conversion of individuals. It 
is at once clear that for this the thought of eternity is 
a most potent influence. As the great occurrences of 
history exhibit the operation of the divine Judgment 
on a national scale, so the opportunities or difficulties 
that come to individuals exhibit the divine Judgment 
on the characters that they have been forming. Every 
opportunity or emergency is in its degree a “crisis” 
—and “crisis” is the Greek for ‘“judgment”— 
because by his reaction to it a man is judged. The 
judgment is not a verdict or sentence pronounced 
afterwards; it is the verdict of the events themselves 
as they occur in accordance with the divine ordering 
of the universe. ‘This is the judgment, that light 
is come into the world, and men chose darkness rather 
than light.”” —Two men may have grown up together 
under the same influences, following the same inter- 
ests. A sudden emergency comes, and it is seen that 
their two characters, which had seemed indistinguish- 
able, were really profoundly different. The Day of the 
Lord is come suddenly upon them, and “‘the one is 
taken and the other left.” 


248 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


So the eternal is present within the process of 
History, revealing itself in judgments which are not 
interventions but are the manifestation of what is 
always there. For the individual, if not for the nation, 
there is also this impact of the eternal upon the tem- 
poral—that so soon as a man has done anything at 
all, he is to all eternity the man who did that thing. 
His choice becomes part of the eternal fact. Its value 
may be affected by later events; its occurrence is 
fixed. 

4. Thus at every point the Eternal impinges on 
the Temporal and revolutionizes its values. There 
remains the question of finality. Is the judgment 
which we see at work in History ever completed in 
a final Judgment wherein the meaning of History 
for men and for mankind is gathered up? The ques- 
tion is rather of speculative than of practical im- 
portance. We may discuss it under three heads. 

First, it is clear that judgment on a nation may be 
final; a nation may be wiped out; or its history may be 
so broken that no restoration can set that same history 
again in process. No “restoration of the Jews to 
Palestine” can now affect the finality of the judgment 
of which the armies of Titus were the instrument.! 

Secondly, if it is true that the free response of each 
individual is necessary to his entry into that fellowship 
with God which is ‘‘salvation”’—as it must be if the 
meaning of this fellowship is revealed in Christ—it 


1 There is a singularly vivid and impressive instance of a national 
choice involving a final national judgment in Trevelyan’s Manin and 
the Venetian Revolution, pp. 198, 199. It is inconceivable that the 
old Austrian Empire will ever exist again. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 240 


must be possible for the individual to persist in refusal, 
and that persistence may become final. If it does, 
that is “perdition”’; and there is nothing left that 
Almighty Love can do with such a soul except to 
bring it to an end. That, no doubt, constitutes a 
failure in God; and the argument for “‘universalism”’ 
rests on this consideration. But to deny the possibility 
of failure in God is also to deny the freedom of man to 
repudiate God, and therefore also the freedom of his 
self-devotion when he offers it. As we know more 
about the reality of human responsibility than we do 
about the mode of Divine Omnipotence, it is wiser to 
insist on the possibility that men may involve them- 
selves in perdition than on the difficulty of reconciling 
this with something that anyhow transcends our 
comprehension. After all it is the rather abstract 
notion of Omnipotence that makes us hesitate to 
affirm the possibility of perdition; it is the concrete 
and self-manifested quality of Love which leads us to 
believe that God so longs for a freely offered life that 
He risks the loss involved in a choice which brings 
perdition. Because He is love, He made us free; 
because we are free, we may choose to perish; it is 
belief in His Love which leads us to believe in the 
possibility of “eternal loss.” 

But of course this does not mean ‘‘eternal torment.” 
Love cannot inflict that. The doctrine of the Church 
has suffered at this point from the introduction of a 
belief in the inherent indestructibility of every in- 
dividual soul, which has its origin in Greek rather than 
in Palestinian sources.1 The New Testament cer- 

1Cf. Gore, Belief in God, pp. 130, 131 footnote. 


LL 


250 CHRISTVPHE VEROLEH 


tainly implies that all men survive physical death; 1 
but it equally implies that not all men attain to eternal 
life.2. But whether in the form of ‘“‘eternal torment” 
or of “annihilation” the New Testament certainly 
/ teaches that on the choice of every will an infinite 
‘ issue hangs. The question at stake is not one of less 
or more, nor one of sooner or later; it is one of life or 
death. And it is good for us that it should be so. It 
is bracing to the will that it should have real respon- 
sibility; and of this a dogmatic universalism would 
deprive it.® 

Thirdly, we have the question whether there is a 
future event in which all the history of mankind is 
gathered up—the traditional Day of Judgment. 
This is simply the religious form of the question 
whether Time has a temporal end. It is impossible 
to satisfy the mind or imagination with either answer. 
What happens after the Day of Judgment? Can 
static perfection or attainment be interesting? Or 
will there be further tasks for the souls of just men 
made perfect to essay? No answer can be given. © 
But perhaps the last question suggests the nearest 
approach that we can make to a solution. There are 
many relative ends of the world; there was an end of 
the ancient world, and an end of the medizval world, 
perhaps there will be an end of the “modern” Euro- 


1 Cf, 2 Corinthians ii. 10. 

2 Cf. St. Luke xx. 35. The “fire is everlasting, but not necessarily or 
even probably that which is cast into it; and it is not even clear that 
aidvios means “everlasting.” 

3] have considerably modified my emphasis in this whole matter 
since I wrote Mens Creatrix—cf. pp. 290, 357. 


ETERNITY AND HISTORY 251 


pean world—in 1924 it looks as if that end were not far 
off. Such phrases are not remote from the suggestion 
of apostolic language, for the phrase in the New Testa- 
ment is “the end of the age.’’ Moreover, there must 
be an end to such human life as we know on this 
planet, either by a dramatic finale or by the gradual 
depopulation of the earth through cold. There may 


be no end of History, if by History we mean successive _ 
events. But there must be an end to human History— _ 


to the series of events which arises from that struggle 


or balance of spiritual and animal which is called ~~ 


Human Nature. And the end must be the fully 
established Kingdom of God, wherein all living souls 
respond to the Divine Love, and for love’s sake are 
obedient to the Divine Will. Whether at that stage 
all who have ever lived will so respond, or some will 
have lost their life through love of it cannot be fore- 


told. But the end of History is the complete coming 


of the Kingdom. 

Whether, or how fully, that Kingdom can come 
on earth is unimportant. It can come more than it is 
come yet; and here or elsewhere it will be established 
in perfection in the souls of men. For it is ready to 
come now. From the beginning of the Gospel it is 
at hand. The only condition of its coming is that 
men should “repent,” that is that they should cease 
to look at or value experience as temporal only, and 
begin to look at and value it as constitutive of eternity. 


The Kingdom of God will come when men conduct \ Ay 
their History as citizens of Eternity. In the Eternal ‘ 


are the foundations of that outward unity for which 
all History is the search; but only they can build a 


Lor9 Lene 


/ 


252 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


civilization on those foundations who are also build- 
ing on the same foundations that inward unity which 
is the goal of every individual soul. 

One word must be added. The revelation of the 
Eternal in Jesus Christ forbids us to find the meaning 
of man’s life only, or even chiefly, within the process 
of successive events which make up man’s terrestrial 
history. It is to be found in a new creation; not only 
in a fuller apprehension of the facts of this world- 
order, but in resurrection to a new order of being and 
of experience, of which we can only say that so far as 
we here and now become partakers of the fruits of 
the Spirit, we are in our degree already realizing our 
citizenship in Heaven. 


CHAPTER XII 


° 


MAN IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION 


“Tf a Divine Being chose to become incarnate for the sake of sinners, 
it is impossible to regard our earthly lives either as an unworthy 
choice or as a punishment. They are rather the means by which 
Divine love may be brought down into an imperfect world, as the 
rest of nature is the means by which the wisdom and beauty of the 
Divine mind are made manifest.”—W. R. INcn. 


BEETHOVEN composed his Mass in D major while 
Napoleon was advancing on Vienna; when he came 
to the last chorus—“‘Dona nobis pacem”—he wrote 
above his score, “Prayer for inward and outward 
peace.’ It is seldom that the nature of man’s 
utmost need is presented to him in a manner so vivid; 
but at all times it is true that the need of man is for 
inward and outward peace. With the achievement of 
outward peace or unity we were concerned in the last 
chapter; but one of the elements in the problem was 
there omitted. Why is it that nations and societies 
fail to order their conduct in accordance with the 
eternal principles? They have no organs of choice 
or purpose other than the wills of the citizens. It 


1 Incidentally, also, he set the words to a fugue on a theme familiar 
in Handel’s Messiah, where it goes with the words “He shall reign for 
ever and ever.” Beethoven was far too enthusiastic an admirer of 
Handel for this to be accidental; just then, at any rate, he knew 
what is the one condition of human peace. 


204 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


is in the last resort because individual men misunder- 
stand their own nature and their own true good that 
Politics and Political History present such a dismal 
spectacle. As Plato saw quite clearly, all political 
actions and institutions have their origin in the char- 
acters of the general body of citizens, though it is 
also true that political institutions tend powerfully to 
reproduce in subsequent generations the type of 
character which they reflect and from which they 
grew. Moreover, as Plato also saw, inasmuch as no 
nation is eternal while the soul is (or can be) eternal, 
the really important question about any political 
order is, not whether it makes the nation strong, but 
whether it tends to develop in the citizens the type of 
character that best fits them for their eternal destiny. 
Hildebrand was quite right in principle when he said 
that Politics ought to be subordinate to the Church 
as the trustee of the Gospel, though he, and still more 
his successors, hopelessly compromised this principle 
when they tried to make the Church the supreme 
political authority instead of a source of spiritual 
energy to all political authorities. The root of that 
mistake is the belief that the regeneration of social 
life can precede the conversion and consecration of 
individual life. Karl Marx and Lenin are associated 
with a very different social outlook from Hildebrand 
and Innocent III.; but their distinctive principles are 
different expressions of one and the same fallacy. 

In our former consideration of Human Nature ! 
we were led to the notion of Humanity as a Social 
Fact. We found that the individual is a group of 

1TIn Chapter IV. 


Ss . 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 255 


more or less competing impulses and interests, with 
little discoverable unity at first apart from his physical 
organism, but with an inborn tendency and even 
straining towards unity; we found, further, that he 
and his fellows actually, in large measure, constitute 
each others’ characters (or growing unifications) by 
their mutual influence, but that each system of ex- 
perience is also self-determining from a core of original 
being which is that individual’s own contribution to 
the total scheme of things, but of which the peculiar 
effects can never be estimated with any approach to 
accuracy. ‘The net result is that Humanity is a single 
unit, but that the several persons who compose it are 
real individuals. 

The use of analogy in philosophy is to explain the 
less known by the help of the more known. But the 
more known is nearly always the simpler and more 
elementary, so that the analogy tends to obscure the 
distinctive features of the subject under investigation. 
So it is commonly assumed that society must be either 
a mere collection of individuals, or else that it is an 
organism; if the former, then its unity is a mere 
matter of convenience; if the latter, then the individ- 
ual is only a “limb” (it is St. Paul’s metaphor) whose 
life utterly depends on its union with the whole: The 
first minimizes, the second exaggerates, the principle 
of cohesion in social unity. Not indeed that the unity 
of human society is less real or less close than that of 
an organism, but while the unity is real and intimate, 
the constituent persons are also real and self-determin- 
ing. 

Our conception of Man therefore contains these 


256 CHRIST THE | TRUTH 


elements: men constitute various social units, some 
side by side (as family and political party), some 
included in others (as family and nation), but all at 
last included in the social unity of mankind. Each 
individual is largely constituted by the influence of 
other individuals upon him; and each takes his share 
in constituting others. Thus together they constitute 
Humanity; this is a real unit because all its con- 
stituent members are mutually constitutive of one 
another; it is not a unity existing independently of, 
or over against, the individual human beings +— 
there is no ‘‘Human Nature” apart from human 
beings; but the Humanity which consists of human 
beings is a real unity, wherein each of them is linked to 
every other in a nexus of mutual determination. 
Further, these partly self-determined and partly 
mutually determining individuals are centers of 
appreciation of value, with the result that (knowing 
the values apprehended by themselves) they are dis- 
posed to assert themselves unduly and out of propor- 
tion to their place in the scheme of things or the true 
structure of society. This tendency is Original Sin; 
and it is present both in every individual and in the 
whole social influence—these two reinforcing one 
another. It appears as an exaggeration of the im- 
portance of what is one’s own—one’s self (pride), 
one’s comfort (sloth), one’s reputation (vanity), one’s 
property (avarice), one’s physical pleasure (greed 
and lust)—and this may lead to a direct antagonism 
against those who in any way deny this importance or 


1 As the early Fathers assumed it to be, fashioning their Christology 
accordingly. 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 257 


thwart the enjoyment it is held to justify—envy, 
contempt, spite, malice, hatred. 

The ethical goal for man is an apprehension of 
Value according to Truth, or, in other words, that a 
man should set the right store by the various goods 
of life, irrespective of the question who enjoys them. 
He must aim not only at justice of conduct but justice 
of purpose, including as it does emotion and desire, 
from which conduct springs. “Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself” is the true form of the categorical 
imperative; it tells a man to count every one (in- 
cluding himself) as one, and nobody (not even him- 
self) as more than one. If that happened on a large 
scale the bitterness of life would be gone. But the 
obstacle is found in precisely that which most marks 
man’s advance beyond the animals—his sense of 
Yalue_as a principle. For of necessity each man 
appreciates his own values not only more readily but 
more fully than the values of others. He is a being 
particular and finite called to live by a principle 
universal and infinite; and his particularity distorts 
his vision. It is only God who is able to see the scheme 
of life in such a way as to hold the scales of justice 
even. If man is to rise to the level of true justice, it 
must be because God indwells and inspires him. 

If this is to happen at all, how can it happen? 
There are two possible ways; one is by God indwelling 
the various individuals—and this method God has 
actually followed in all times and places. Nowhere 
has He left Himself without witness, either in the 
order of Nature, the course of History, or the con- 
science of men. In conscience especially He has 


258 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


spoken as men were able to receive His Word—“‘the 
light that lighteneth every man.”’ This may be called 
the method of Divine Immanence. To it we owe the 
art and philosophy of Greece, the legal achievements 
of Rome, and, generally, the whole impulse in man- 
kind towards progress. God made man in His own 
image, capable of apprehending universal principles 
and absolute values; that capacity is itself a divine 
potency at work in men, which constantly spurs them 
on to its further realization. 

But this method of immanent activity is subject to 
one or other of two limiting conditions. Either the 
influence implanted within a man’s own character 
is so strong as to make him as a separate being a mere 
automaton, or else it is one influence among others, 
to which the character in process of formation must 
deliberately submit. In the former case, freedom 
is destroyed, and in place of a truly loving child the 
Heavenly Father receives only His own activity 
returned. In the latter case, the free choice of the 
individual remains, and the reasons which make 
freedom give birth to pride will prevent the absolute 
surrender which is needed for the realization of a 
complete divine indwelling. It is too much to say 
that the method of mere immanence must fail; perhaps 
here and there, in some Buddhist or Moslem saint, it 
has succeeded, so far as success with an isolated in- 
dividual is possible at all; but the chances of success 
on any wide scale are, a prsori, so small that no reason- 
able hope of “‘salvation”’ can be based on it. The exist- 
ence of this divine potency in every man is, however, 
what makes possible the success of the other method. 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 259 


This is that God should Himself enter the course of 
human history by taking into Himself the experience 
of mankind as focused in some one of its centers. 
And this is what, in fact, He has done. As we have 
seen, He submitted to human conditions in all their 
completeness; yet His life was a divine intrusion into 
the course of human events—an intrusion vividly 
represented by the Virgin-Birth. The human Life is 
truly human, and subject to real temptation; yet it 
is also true that He could not yield to the temptation. 
This is not even a paradox to any one who has seriously 
considered what is involved in the temptation felt by 
a man of high character to an act contrary to his 
character: he is attracted by the wrong course; he has 
to keep a hold on himself; he knows he is making a 
real choice; yet (being himself) he could not yield. 
The effort needed to overcome the temptation is a 
real effort, but it is also a necessary effort because his 
character, being such as it is, must so react to the 
situation. Raise this to the ideal limit, and you have 
a character which still needs effort to resist evil, but 
(being such as it is) is bound to make the effort and to 
succeed in it. 

The one character which has caused this claim of 
positive sinlessness to be made on its behalf is the 
character of One who is realized by those who study 
Him to be personally one with God.* The world to 


1Cf. p. 64, specially the Note, where it is pointed out that the in- 
ability expressed in the words “could not” is objective, and not part 
of the subjective experience of the agent. In the case of our Lord I 
believe it to have been subjective also. Cf. p. 148. 

2 Cf, Chapters VII. and VIII. 


260 CHRIST ‘THE TRUTH 


which He came was His own creation; the people to 
whom He came were His own children, though not 
able to make good by moral achievement their claim 
to that title. They were involved in the nexus of sin. 
In the social unity of mankind the Divine Spirit was 
at work; but its predominant feature was the self- 
assertion of its individual members, constantly re- 
newed as each new-born soul awoke to the realization 
of its own group of values, and reinforced by the tone 
of the social environment. If in such a world there is 
born and lives One who at all stages acts as a channel 
of the central and universal Spirit, that is a moral 
miracle far more wonderful than any Virgin-Birth; 
for it presents us with a human soul free from the 
constitutive influence of its social environment so 
far as this is evil or defective; and that is a breach of 
an otherwise universal law as complete as would be a 
total reversal of the Law of Gravitation. 

The mode of this divine intrusion we have already 
considered. There is no general “humanity” in 
which the Divine Word could be clothed, apart from 
all particular human centers of experience; but the 
Divine Word took to Himself human experience in 
one such center, so completely subsuming the human 
personality that God and Man in Jesus Christ are one 
Person.t From Him a new influence goes forth, the 
attractive power and compelling appeal of perfectly 
holy love, expressed in the human fashion that calls 
forth sympathy.” This power is not other than the 


1 Cf. Chapter VIII. 
2 The possibility of sympathy has never (as far as I know) received 
sufficient attention either from psychologists or from philosophers. If 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 261 


divine potency in men that urges them to progress; 
but it is its perfect counterpart. In the response of 
love which the human being makes, he is at once free 
and enslaved; he is the willing slave, as the lover is 
the willing slave of his mistress. This was the one 
way by which God could draw men to Himself with- 
out overpowering their freedom. When I direct my 
action to please a friend, my conduct is determined 
by his pleasure, but there is no sort of conduct in 
which I am so supremely conscious of utter freedom. 
If I learn to love God in answer to His love for me 
and for all men, this principle receives its fullest ex- 
pression; His slavery is perfect freedom. 

We have already seen how the manifestation of the 
Divine Love launches into the world a society of 
which the distinctive characteristic (in so far as its 
members are true to its vitalizing principle) is a spirit 
of fellowship that overleaps all divisions. But men 
come into that society one by one; and the degree 
of their loyalty depends, at least partly, on their own 
free choice. The existence of the society—the Church 
—is the starting-point and constant support of their 
effort to respond to the Divine Love, but the vitality 
of the society in actuality depends on the depth of 
conversion and consecration in the individual mem- 
bers. In fact, the chief choice which any individual 
makes is the choice of the influences to which he will 
deliberately submit himself. For the Christian, the 


it is a merely sentimental reaction on the part of a completely sep- 
arate ‘“‘self,” it is of little consequence; but if it is (as I believe) a 
real union of personalities through an experience in which both share, 
it is always a true atonement. 


262 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


choice is broadly between the spirit of Christ, chiefly 
but not solely active in the Church, and the influences 
in the world which work upon his lower nature. As 
it was through one center of experience that the 
supreme revelation came, so the response must be 
made by individuals, one by one, each as he does this, 
and in the degree in which he does it, making the task* 
easier for others. 

For this reason the Church must make respect for 
freedom its most fundamental: principle of action. 
Persecution strikes at the root of the whole principle 
of Christianity. Discipleship. must be freely chosen 
and freely maintained. But close behind it comes 
the principle of fellowship. We are free, in order that 
we may freely prefer the general good to our own 
separate good, and every other use of freedom is 
wrong. A man must be allowed to go wrong if he 
wants—so far as the Church is concerned;? but 
his conscience should be aroused, and the appeal to 
his capacity for devotion made, as potently as may 
be. 

What is the difference made for us by the mani- 
festation of the Divine Love in a human life? We 
found that the self-centered life cannot attain to the 
inward and outward unity in which alone it can find 
joy and peace; and its inability is due to its very 
constitution as self-centered. But how can any life 
in fact be anything else? A man must be the center 
of his own social relationships. From that center he 


17t may be right for the State to prevent him by coercion, but this 
is only ideally right when the State’s act expressed his own real pur- 
pose in the way referred to in Chapter X, p. 181. 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 263 


appreciates all values, so far as he appreciates them 
at all. 

Now it is, of course, quite true that every man is 
himself and not some one else; and also that he exists 
in order to realize the values apprehensible from his 
center and no other. What is required is not that 
he should become either some one else or no one in 
particular, but that he should discharge his particular 
function in response to the Universal Spirit, the Spirit 
of the Whole. But until this is genuinely known; he 
cannot respond to it, and the impulse within him 
towards progress and perfection is not, and from its 
nature and conditions cannot be, a revelation of the 
Universal Spirit in that concrete form which alone 
evokes sympathy and therefore alone can give to 
emotion that universalized quality which marks it 
as emotional justice. In other words, if a man is to 
love his neighbor as himself, he must first love God 
with all his heart; and if that is to happen, God must 
reveal His love in such a manner as to claim his heart. 

‘Salvation’ therefore consists in the substitution 
of the Spirit of the Whole for the spirit of the par- 
ticular self in the control of all life—conduct, thought, 
feeling. If a man can say truly, “‘I live, yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me,” he is ‘‘saved.” And this 
alone is salvation. Consequently, for the man as yet 
unsaved the essential need is “‘conversion’’—a change 
in the direction of his life: and this must take the form 
of self-sacrifice—the repudiation of all that belongs to 
the particularity of the self alone and has no part in 
the universal good. The pain of such self-sacrifice 
is a necessary cost or price of salvation; but the self- 


264 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


sacrifice itself is not a price of salvation; it zs salva- 
tion, and salvation zs such self-sacrifice. 

Sacrifice is only painful for one or other of two 
reasons: either there is a clinging to the particular 
good which has to be abandoned, and that is selfish- 
ness in the soul that makes the sacrifice; or else there 
is indifference or hostility in those for whom the 
sacrifice is made, and that is selfishness in them. It 
is always selfishness—or continued exaggeration of 
the particular interests of Selves—which makes pain- 
ful the substitution of Love for self as the controlling 
influence of life. But the essential sacrifice need not 
be painful at all; it can be the most intense delight. 
All who have loved know this. Whenever a man 
chooses to do or to suffer, because of his care for 
others, what apart from that care he would not choose 
to do or suffer, that is the essence of self-sacrifice. It 
may be done conscientiously with pain as an act of 
duty; but when the care for others amounts to love, 
and this love is returned, there is no pain; there is no 
feeling even of conscientiousness; there is, instead, 
only an intense delight.? 

Yet even love itself is self-centered, and leads to a 
group egoism as dangerous as individual selfishness, 
unless it is either love of God or rooted in love of God. 
The mother who is utterly devoted to her children 
may be possessed by an intense family-selfishness. 
Even for the salvation of love we depend on the power 
of the self-manifested love of God to draw us into 
fellowship with itself by eliciting an answering love. 
But if in answer .to God’s love I begin to love Him, 


1 This is repeated in a wider context on p. 273. 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 265, 


my love for Him must make me, for His sake, love 
those whom He loves as He loves me. To love God, 
as He is revealed in Christ, prevents all malice or 
envy or contempt, so far as it influences us at all, and 
redeems our very love from selfishness. 

A searching illustration of the Christian conception 
of Man and his destiny is provided by the teaching 
of the New Testament about riches. Plainly they are 
regarded as a snare; the reason seems to be that 
Heaven is the fellowship of self-sacrifice, and riches, 
being an extension of what is one’s “own,” Increase 
the area of our selfish attachment. The poor man 
who is even to satisfy his natural impulses of generosity 
must make some real sacrifice; the rich man who 
wishes to have the satisfaction of kindness to the 
needy may “‘shake the superflux to them,” and it is 
harder to reach even the initial discipline of real self- 
sacrifice. The sequence of ideas which led to Mon- 
asticism was perfectly justified in itself. It is easier 
to win detachment from particular interests if worldly 
possessions and ambitions have been once for all 
renounced. But it is a false method none the less; ? 
for it ignores our responsibility to the world and 
comes near to commending self-sacrifice for selfish 
reasons. A man must take all the responsibilities of 
his position; ‘‘my station and its duties,” which Mr. 
F. H. Bradley has taught us to regard the surest guide 
to ethical duty,? is a thoroughly valid principle, 


1 This is no denial that some individuals are called to the contem- 
plative life; they certainly are; but this vocation, though for them the 
true one, is no “higher” than any other. 

2In Ethical Studies. 


266 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


though it does not help in the most important of all 
choices—the choice of ‘“‘my station.”’ There may be 
responsibilities for wife and family, and the education 
of children. To set these aside for the sake of individ- 
ual salvation would be self-contradictory, for it 
would be to enter on a selfish search for unselfishness. 
A man must fulfil the duties of his station; if these 
bring “‘riches,” he must have them ‘‘as though he had 
them not.” He must use the wider loyalty to check 
the narrower, never pursuing the interest of his own 
family at a more than counterbalancing loss to the 
whole community. To take a concrete case, he must 
consider a political proposal in the light of its effect 
on the general well-being, not in the light of its effect 
on his own financial position; and he must exercise his 
vote accordingly. Whatever happens he will never 
make ‘‘riches”’ his aim, or choose a profession only 
or chiefly because it offers the opportunity to make a 
fortune. If, however, the course by which he can 
give the best service brings ‘‘riches,” he will try to 
avoid the snares that accompany them and to make 
the use of them which most benefits the community. 

On the other hand, real poverty is also a spiritual 
hindrance. The modern and certainly non-Christian 
organization of society has given rise to a form of 
poverty almost unknown in the Palestine of Apostolic 
times. To be in fear for the morrow through the 
modern nightmare of insecurity roots a man in his 
own self as effectively as any riches. The destitute 
man is possessed by his need for the material support 
of life; the rich man is encumbered with possessions 
and may be possessed by fear that he will lose them. 


Pa 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 267 


The “poverty” which is spiritually desirable is that 
which provides a sufficiency for the needs of a real 
human life, but not enough to mark a man off from 
the majority of his fellow-citizens, and so make diffi- 
cult the widest fellowship. All that stereotypes a 
man’s particularity or encourages a sense of his 
interests as conflicting with those of others is perilous. 
For the aim of human life is that it should become so 
indwelt by God, the Spirit of the Whole, that His 
universal Purpose expresses itself in complete articula- 
tion through the diverse yet harmonizing lives of all 
finite spirits. 

Man emerges from Nature and reveals new qualities 
even in Nature itself. He finds his own destiny when 
God takes possession of him and controls him. Does 
this affect his relationship to the Nature from which 
he emerged? Apparently it does. In the record of 
the only Life which perfectly illustrates the point we 
read of a capacity to heal diseases by an efflux of 
spiritual power ! and to walk on the water.2 More- 
over, Christ is reported as saying, ‘The works that 
I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these 
shall ye do, because I go to the Father.” 3? The perfect 
union of Human Nature in the Son with the Father 
was to make possible an even greater exercise of 
power than could before that be shown only by the 
Son Himself in Human Nature. We are still at the 


1St Mark v. 30. This shows that cure at least to have been more 
than a case of “suggestion,” though no doubt “suggestion” may 
have had much to do with it and with the other cures recorded in the 
Gospels. 

2 St. Mark vi. 48. 3St. John xiv. 12. 


268 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


very beginning of such discoveries as are to be made 
in this field, and all that can be said is speculation 
only. But the suggestion of the New Testament 
certainly is that when Man is really indwelt by God, 
Nature will reveal new and entirely unpredictable 
qualities. ‘The earnest expectation of the creation 
waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.” + And 
certainly this is congruous with what on other grounds 
we have found to be the most probable theory of the 
universe. As Life revealed in Matter qualities that 
Physics and Chemistry could not have predicted; as 
Mind did the same for Life and for living Matter; as 
Spirit did the same for the thinking living organism— 
so, we may expect, will God for the spiritual being 
whom He has, by the operation of His laws, created 
out of Nature. But we must mark the conditions, 
for they are clearer than are the results to be hoped 
for. Christ’s ‘‘miracles” are works of power; but 
their chief characteristic is that the power is under the 
control of love. The contrast of the Apocryphal 
Gospels reminds us that in the New Testament Christ 
nowhere used miraculous power in His own interest. 
If there are powers held in store for men as they enter 
into closer fellowship with God, they are powers that 
can only be exercised for the fulfillment of God’s 
purpose of love—never for convenience, or in a “‘test 
case,” or for display, or for the satisfaction of exercis- 
ing power. If such powers exist, they are part of the 
Omnipotence of Love, and are only released when 
the finite spirit which is to use them is in perfect union 
with the Almighty Love. 


1 Romans viii. 19. 


~~ ee 


MAN AND THE INCARNATION 260 


It is clear from what has been said that Heaven 
(if we accept the traditional name for the home and 
goal of the human spirit) is not fitly symbolized by 
the notion of a place to which men may travel separ- 
ately. Heaven is the universal fellowship of all spirits 
in the Love of the Divine Spirit. As long as any 
existing spirit remains outside, rebelling against the 
fellowship and refusing the self-sacrifice which con- 
stitutes membership, so long Heaven does not exist 
for any one—not even for God.! And yet in God the 
achievement is sure, so that the individual who has 
really and fully surrendered his heart to God has not 
only attained the goal of his destiny so far as circum- 
stances permit, but finding in God the assurance of 
the end and the eternal perfection, he also finds for 
himself the fruition of perfect joy and peace. 

For he knows that if he is seeking God, he has in 
himself the seed of eternal life. Some Greek philos- 
ophers tried to prove that the individual soul is im- 
mortal; but they failed. Plato’s arguments only lead 
to the position accepted by Aristotle, that the spiritual 
principle is indestructible. Only God is in Himself 
immortal; but whatever is united with Him shares 
that immortality. And Christ’s Resurrection has 
proved that human nature, when indwelt by God, 
conquers death. Our hope of immortality rests on 
this revelation of what is possible, and on the Love 
of God to make it actual. For if God loves, He will 
not let the object of His love be abolished out of 
existence. Only, then, if a man so repels the love of 


‘I. e. for God as enduring through Time; the words in the text are 
true but are not the whole truth; cf. Chapter XV. 


270 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


God as to have nothing left in him but evil, will God 
allow him to perish. 

If, therefore, a man has learned the true goal of his 
being and is seeking to open his heart to God so that 
God may dwell in him and he in God, he knows that 
he has all Time before him in which to explore the 
riches of the Divine Love which to all ages he never 
will exhaust. He is therefore earnest, but quite 
unhurried. His present limitations do not trouble 
him. He has the everlasting years before him, and he 
has God with him all the way. 


PARLIN, 


OUTER CIRCLE 


‘ ies 
Te inte a) eh 


4 
Van Aha ‘ 





CHAPTER XIII 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 


“Just this, I think, is what worship means: that the Whole must 
become a separate object of pursuit, taking its turn as if it also were 
a part, as if it were another among the many goods of practical occupa- 
tion.” —W. E. Hocxine. 


Man, we have found, represents that stage in the 
stratification of Reality where Reason or Spirit— 
the capacity for apprehending universal principles 
and absolute obligation—supervenes upon Mind (as 
calculation of means to ends) and Life; as the lower 
stages first revealed their full potentialities when 
Spirit thus came upon them and indwelt them, so, we 
have found, Man only reveals what it is in him to be 
when God indwells him. The meaning of such an ex- 
pression is given by the historic fact of the Incarna- 
tion. It is only since the full revelation of human 
nature was given through the actual indwelling of it by 
God that the true character of man’s spirit has become 
apparent. We now see it as being already the sphere 
of operation within man of that same Divine Spirit 
who is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ. He reveals 
both God and Man, and our conception of both has 
suffered profound modification because of what He 


was and did. The spiritual character of Man made | 


possible at once the Incarnation and men’s response 
to it. That response consists in a quickening of the 


274 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


inner activity of the Divine Spirit released by man’s 
new devotion to God in answer to His love revealed. 
Those in whom that One Spirit is active through their 
responsive love to God are by that Spirit bound to- 
gether in a Fellowship of which He is the bond of 
unity and energizing power; this is the true (or ideal) 
Church. But these same people are also members of 


/ “the world,’ and cannot sever themselves from the 


world without neglect of real responsibilities. They 
are therefore under the influence both of a partly un- 
converted society and also of the Divine Spirit at work 
in the Church. ‘To both influences their nature 
qualifies them to respond. There is a constant tend- 
ency to settle down in some compromise between the 
two. Even when that happens there is still an activity 
of the Divine Spirit, holding selfishness and world- 
liness in check. Compromise is not surrender; and 
total surrender is rare in those who call themselves 
Christians at all. And so long as a man has not utterly 
quenched the Spirit, there is possibility of revival. 
But, plainly, compromise cannot be accepted as 
really tolerable. Those who have once heard the call 
of the Divine Spirit within them to give their lives— 
St. Paul makes it emphatic by saying their ‘‘bodies” # 
—as a reasonable return for the love of God towards 
them, know that they have no right to contentment 
until this is done. Yet the influence of the world still 
operates; and there is no possibility of increasing our 
self-dedication until it becomes perfect, unless we 
deliberately and repeatedly turn our minds towards 
that Love of God, that God of Love, to whom we 


1 Romans xii. 1. 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS aqy 


would be dedicated. This is the place of Worship in 
Christian discipline. If we already love Him, and in 
whatsoever degree we already love Him, we shall 
desire times when we give our hearts and minds to 
Him alone. But apart from such a desire, the very 
obligation to give our lives to God will require a per- 
petually repeated concentration of attention upon 
Him in order that we may more and more fulfill our 
obligation. Throughout our growth as Christians 
worship is a duty; as we advance it becomes a delight; 
and at all times a true act of worship is the fulfill- 
ment—for a moment—of the true destiny of our being. 
It is this both in momentary actualization and in 
promise of future and permanent attainment. It is 
the one way to that attainment. The command that 
we should love our neighbor (which is the practical 
expression of our search for outward or social unity) 
cannot be fulfilled except so far as we love God. Our 
“neighbor”? may be for one reason or another the sort 
of person that we cannot love (so to speak) directly, 
and the effort to do so will only increase our antago- 
nism. But God, if we once understand Him, we all can 
love, and so the command to love Him is one that can 
be obeyed without other conditions being first ful- 
filled. All can love Him, because for each He is the 
Life of Life; by Him I live; by Him I came to be; by 
Him I aspire, so far as I aspire at all, to better things. 
If I realize Him, I must love Him. So I may fitly be 
commanded to love Him; and from this I shall go on 
to love my neighbor, for God’s sake if not yet for his 
own. But as I become more perfectly united to God, 
I begin to love my neighbor as God loves him, that is for 


276 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


himself, or for the good thing that he at least can be 
and can bring into being. In the perpetual return of 
our hearts and minds to God in worship we both enjoy 
a foretaste of our perfect happiness, and find the 
renewal of spiritual strength by which we do the work 
which fits us for it. 

The Christian finds his closest approach to God 
in Jesus Christ, in whom he is also united to his fellow- 
disciples. Consequently his most normal mode of 
worship is as a member of the worshiping body which 
is the Church. This worship may be rendered by 
corporate silence, or by united utterance, or by sym- 
bolic action. Of the first two little need be said, 
except that in principle they are as “sacramental” 
as the last. Plainly, speech is a physical fact; if any- 
thing in the world is ‘‘an outward and visible sign” 
of something ‘‘inward and spiritual” it is vocal utter- 
ance. By means of atmospheric vibrations set up in 
one man’s larynx and striking upon another man’s 
ear, the latter apprehends the thought and feeling of 
the former. Speech is an ‘‘efficacious sign” if ever 
there was one. But it suffers from two limitations: it 
is too articulate for the deepest feelings, which are 
best expressed by a gesture which suggests their 
totality without any analysis of their content— 
the pressure of the hand, the bowing of the head, 
or the like; and it is only intelligible to those who 
know the particular language used, whereas a gesture 
or symbolic act can be such as to be universally in- 
telligible. It is perhaps less obvious that corporate 
silence is physical, and the use of it for worship sacra- 
mental; but it is true. No one who has sat or knelt 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 297 


in deliberate corporate silence can doubt that it in- 
duces a nervous tension which is one of the conditions 
of its impressiveness; and nerves are physical. 

It is important to notice that, as Canon Quick has 
pointed out,’ there is in speech a double relation of 
outward to inward. I speak words with a purpose, 
of which my speech is the instrument; but the purpose 
is to convey a meaning, of which my speech is the 
symbol. An “efficacious sign” is precisely one where 
these two relations are combined; but though com- 
bined they are not confused, and each must be allowed 
for in our interpretation of the place of “‘externals” 
in religion. 

The act of worship, then, like all other human acts, 
must at least have physical expression, and is so far 
always sacramental. Moreover, it is generally as- 
sumed that if the worship is silent, that silence is 
charged with the power of the Spirit; if forms of 
words are used, they are words prescribed by the 
Church which was guided by the Spirit in choosing 
them; if free prayer is used, the speaker is guided by 
the Spirit in his utterance; if the sermon is a part of 
the service, the preacher is taught of the Spirit. So we 
cannot say that in other worship the outward form 
expresses and conveys our thought or desire, while in 
a sacramental rite the outward form expresses and 
conveys the power of God. In fundamental principle 
there is no difference whatever between specific sacra- 
ments and any other mode of worship. 

But there is a difference of aspect and emphasis. 
In preaching, the personality of the human medium 

1 Catholic and Protestant Elements in Christianity, pp. 26-29. 


278 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


counts for most. This does not put preaching on a 
lower plane, for there is on earth no medium so ade- 
quate for the Spirit as a consecrated personality; 
but it is in life rather than in speech that personality 
finds its full expression, so that the sermon does not 
utilize this medium to the full, while the limitations of 
individual apprehension and loyalty must affect the 
message delivered through such a channel. In spoken 
prayer the activity of the worshippers is prominent; 
it may be guided by the Spirit, but the human limita- 
tions are still conspicuously operative. Even in 
corporate silence the activity of concentrated atten- 
tion (the most intense of all human activities) is the 
condition of efficacy. But in the sacraments com- 
monly so called everything combines to insist on the 
priority of the divine action. We only benefit in so 
far as we are actively receptive; but the initiative is 
not only ultimately but manifestly and avowedly 
with God. 

It may conduce to clearness if we attempt some 
exposition of the two dominical sacraments in accord- 
ance with the position taken up in this book. 

First, we must remember that they are part of the 
life of the Church. We put the matter on a false 
basis if we isolate each particular sacramental act, and 
ask what happens precisely then and there, or what 
precise gift is then and there given or received. The 
sacramental act does not exist in this isolation; it is 
an act of the Church, and derives at least a part of its 
significance from this fact. In truth the Church is 
itself the permanent sacrament; it is an organized 
society possessed (though not always availing itself) 


Eee eS 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 279 


of a supernatural life—the life of God—which united 
humanity with itself in Jesus Christ. But all of this 
again was only possible because the universe itself is 
an organ of God’s self-expression. Thus we have the 
following background of the sacramental worship of 
the Church: the universe is the fundamental sacra- 
ment, and taken in its entirety (when of course it in- 
cludes the Incarnation and Atonement) is the perfect 
sacrament extensively; but it only becomes this, so 
far as our world and human history are concerned, 
because within it and determining its course is the 
Incarnation, which is the perfect sacrament inten- 
sively—the perfect expression in a moment of what is 
also perfectly expressed in everlasting Time, the Will 
of God; resulting from the Incarnation we find the 
“‘Spirit-bearing Body,” which is not actually a perfect 
sacrament, because its members are not utterly sur- 
rendered to the spirit within it, but none the less lives 
by the Life which came fully into the world in Christ; 
as part of the life of this Body we find certain specific 
sacraments or sacramental acts. 

Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration and of 
incorporation into the Church (or into Christ)) ahese 
are not two things, but one. It is through the Church 
that the influence of Christ reaches us; even when 
we read the Gospels by ourselves, the influence of 
Christ is reaching us through the Evangelists, who 
are members of the Church. Now a human being 
is (as we saw) morally constituted to a great extent by 
his social environment; if he is left to “the world” 
he may become a respectable citizen, but he is shut \, 
off from the divine Life offered to men in Christ, and 


280 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


-/ cannot escape from the self-centeredness which is 


‘‘natural” to man. This is the indisputable fact of 
Original Sin. It is through becoming a member of 
the Church that he comes under the constitutive 
influence of that divine Life offered to men in Christ. 
This is not to say that formal membership is indis- 
pensable to the operation of that influence; manifestly 
it is not; a man who has never become a member of 
the Church in the formal sense may surrender his soul 
to Christ and be utterly governed by His Spirit. But 
this can only happen if that Spirit is really active in 
the world, and this implies a channel for His activity. 
It is because there is a Church so constituted as to keep 
alive belief in a gift of Life from the transcendent God 
that Christians other than Church members, and some 
who do not so call themselves, are brought under the 
constitutive and regenerating influence of Christ. 
Because there is a Church which practices Baptism 
(and other such rites), those who do not receive 
Baptism do none the less (as their lives show) receive 
in their measure the benefits of Baptism. 

The influence of the sacrament is thus twofold; 
in acts in two directions; there is not only its effect on 
the person baptized, but there is also the effect on the 
Church itself in keeping alive the memory of the kind 
of society that the Church is, and so in maintaining 
its actual life as one which has regenerative power. 
The Church itself is the sacrament of human nature 
indwelt by God; to become a member of the Church 
is to become a participator In human nature so in- 
dwelt; and whatever tends to release in men’s souls 
the divine energy bestowed on the Church, makes the 


ee 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 281 


act of entrance into it more completely revolutionary. 
So the value of Baptism to its recipient is partly in- 
direct, and reaches him through the influence of his 
own and countless other Baptismal Services upon the 
Church which by his Baptism he enters. The state- 
ment tends to hecome involved; that is what always 
happens when we try to analyse a single and living 
whole. 

But this, of course, is not the only effect of Baptism 
on its recipient; that effect in its completeness is only 
seen when the incorporation into the Church is a 
reality and Christian influences are active in molding 
character; and then, of course, the precise effect of 
Baptism cannot be distinguished from the general 
effect of those influences. Moreover, no one supposes 
that Baptism administered in infancy and followed by 
neglect will produce any spiritual effect that can be 
traced by human observers. But that there is such 
an effect cannot really be questioned; it appears in 
two ways. All spiritual teachers know the effective- 
ness of an appeal to the fact that the learner was in 
fact incorporated into Christ and by a historic rite 
made a member of the historic Church. But beyond 
this is the effect of the rite itself. Through His Body 
(the Church) acting by its appropriate organ (the 
priest) Christ receives the child to Himself. Of course 
this affects the soul of the child; but the effect is 
germinal, and only becomes perceptible when favor- 
able conditions have made possible its development 
into conscious and willing membership of the Body of 
Christ. 

The symbolism might have been other than it is. 


282 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


One sect, I am told, baptizes with flowers instead of 
water. Christ might have so appointed; but He did 
not. The little group, of His disciples carried on the 
rite associated with John the Baptist’s call to repent- 
ance. No doubt the symbol (like all symbols) is to 
some extent arbitrary, though it seems impossible to 
conceive one more expressive of its meaning—the 
cleansing from the effect of worldly influence (which 
is Original Sin) so that heavenly influence may do its 
perfect work. But even if another symbol equally 
good could have been chosen at the outset, no other 
can be chosen now. The rites of the Church are fixed 
by that first decision, because the Church is essentially 
rooted in history; and it is so rooted because history 
is the arena wherein God’s purpose (for men, at least) 
is to be fulfilled. 

The vital importance of the historic background 
and of real historic continuity with it is evident for all 
to see when we turn to the other dominical sacrament 
—the Eucharist. Here the symbolism consists in an 
actual repetition of the action of the Lord at the Last 
Supper on the night of the betrayal. Whether the 
Supper was actually the Passover (as the Synoptists 
say) or was held before the day of the Passover (as 
St. John says), the Paschal Feast was in all men’s 
minds. It commemorated the Exodus. At the 
Transfiguration, a culminating point in the Lord’s 
human “religious experience,” the theme of His 
colloquy was the new Exodus which He was to accom- 
plish ‘—an Exodus which for Him was death, for 
' His people deliverance. The Paschal Lamb was the 
1St. Luke ix. 31. 





WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 283 


sustenance for the journey away from bondage to 
freedom. At that Supper the Lord took bread, gave 
thanks for it, broke it, and gave it, saying that it was 
His Body and that what He was doing His disciples 
must do. The old covenant which St. Paul later would 
not hesitate to call bondage was ratified with sacrifi- 
cial blood. The Lord now gave the Cup, saying 
that it was His Blood, and ratified a new Cove- 
nant. The next day His Body was pierced by the 
nails and the spear; the next day His Blood was 
shed, and the Life of which it was the symbol was 
given in perfect completeness of surrender to the 
Father. 

“This is my Body.” “Do this.” What had the 
words meant? First they must have meant, “As 
I treat this Bread, so I treat my Body; and you must 
do the same.” The sacrificial language, especially 
as concerns the Blood, stamped the whole episode 
with a sacrificial character. And, plainly, it was pre- 
paratory for the morrow’s event. It would help the 
disciples to realize that the Death of Christ was a 
sacrifice, even the only true sacrifice. And what they 
should learn of that sacrifice would help to interpret 
the symbolic act by which He had prepared them to 
understand it. But the perfect sacrifice of Christ is 
not limited to His Death; it consists not in any mo- 
mentary offering but in the perfection of His obedi- 
ence, which was always complete.t The Death is not 
other than the Life; it was its inevitable result and 
appropriate climax. It is Christ’s union of humanity 
with God in perfect obedience which is the essential 

1 Hebrews x. 1-14, specially 8, o. 


284 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


sacrifice, of which the Cross is the uttermost expres- 
sion and essential symbol.! 

This union was accomplished by Christ in His 
own Person, but not for Himself alone. As we saw,’ 
by living amongst men the sinless life, the life of 
perfect obedience, He became the Head of a new 
society, the pivot of a new moral system, of which 
perfect obedience to God is the animating principle. 
This is the Church; and so far as men consent to be 
raised to the fulfillment of their own destiny, it will 
at last include all mankind in the unity of obedience 
to God through their participation in the Spirit of 
Christ. Consequently in this service, which is pre- 
eminently the Christian’s means of access to the 
Eternal, and wherein he worships not as an individual 
but as a member of the Church of all times and places,? 
the relevant conception of Christ is not that of the 
historic Figure but that of the Universal Man.* The 
sacrifice of Christ is potentially but most really the 
sacrifice of Humanity. Our task is, by His Spirit, to 
take our place in that sacrifice. In the strict sense 
there is only one sacrifice—the obedience of the Son 
to the Father, and of Humanity to the Father in the 
Son. This was manifest in actual achievement on 
Calvary; it is represented in the breaking of the 
Bread; it is reproduced in our self-dedication and 
resultant service; it 1s consummated in the final 
coming of the Kingdom. ‘We do show forth the 
Lord’s death till He come.” ‘The Death and the 


1 J. e. asymbol which is a perfect instance of what it symbolizes: cf. 
Mens Creatrix, pp. 129 ff. 
2P, 152. * frp, 163. ‘CL Dp. Iss 





WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 285 


Coming are the initial and crowning moments of the 
process which exhibits in time the eternal sacrifice and 
the triumph which Divine Love wins by means of it. 

It is essential to the spiritual value of this sacra- 
ment that we do what the Lord did. It is all symbol, 
no doubt, but it is expressive, not arbitrary, symbol; 
that is to say, the spiritual reality signified is actually 
conveyed by the symbol. The symbol is emphatically 
not mere symbol; if it were that, we should only receive 
what our minds could grasp of the meaning symbol- 
ized. It is an instrument of the Lord’s purpose to give 
Himself to us, as well as the symbol of what He gives. 
What we receive is not limited by our capacity to 
understand the gift. When with the right intention 
I receive the Bread and the Wine, I actually receive 
Christ, whether I have any awareness of this at the 
moment or not, and always more fully than I am 
aware. We, by repeating and so identifying ourselves 
with His sacrificial act, become participants in His 
one sacrifice, which is the perfect dedication to the 
Father of the Humanity which God in Christ has 
taken to Himself. 

‘This is my Body.” Here, in this Bread so treated, 
we see Christ’s Body broken for the Kingdom. Be- 
cause the Eucharist means what has just been set 
forth, it is a means of access for us to the very Life of 
Christ, and the consecrated Bread is the medium of 
that Life to us. By means of that Bread He is present 
to our souls. He is not locally in the elements. ‘‘Cor- 
pus Christi non est in hoc sacramento sicut in loco”’ 
is the explicit declaration of St. Thomas Aquinas,’ 

1 Summa Theologica, Pt. III. Q. Ixxvi. A. 5. 


286 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


who gave precise formulation to the doctrine of Tran- 
substantiation. But what is Presence at any time? 
According to one view, the “present,” whether tem- 
poral or spatial, is a mere meeting point of various 
non-presents—as of Past and Future. No stretch of 
time is actually “present”; what is actually present 
is a mere point of intersection in which nothing can 
happen. Another view, more correctly as I think, 
takes the ‘‘spacious present”’ as the real present, and 
defines Past and Future with reference to it. The 
Present is, then, that which is directly apprehensible. 
And, in fact, by the word “‘present”’ we do in practice 
mean what is apprehensible. Through the conse- 
crated elements we find Christ specially apprehensible 
so that though He is not personally localized, He is 
accessible by means of what is local. The elements 
come by the act of Consecration to be the vehicle to us 
of His Human Nature and Life. That is now their 
value, and therefore their true “‘substance.”’ + There 
is nothing here of magic or even of miracle, if miracle 
means a fact for which other experience offers no 
analogy. But there is here something possessed of 
as high a dignity as any miracle could ever be—a 
clear manifestation of the principle which informs the 
whole universe, the utilization of lower grades of being 
for the purpose of the higher, even of the highest. 

It is in the whole repetition of Christ’s act that the 
spiritual value or reality les. The consecrated 
elements are the permanent witness of that repetition, 
and it is as such that they become the means or occa- 
sion of the special accessibility or presence of Christ. 

1 Cf. p. 15 and the note at the end of this chapter. 





WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 287 


This is only beneficial, of course, to those who ap- 
proach in faith. This value, like all values, is only 
fully actual when it is appreciated or appropriated. 
For this reason those were right who said that the 
Presence was in the faithful receiver. But they were 
wrong if they held that it was there exclusively; the 
receiver finds, and does not make, this Presence. By 
means of the elements Christ is present, that is, 
accessible; but the accessibility is spiritual, not mate- 
rial or local, and Christ is only actually present to the 
soul of those who make right use of the means of 
access afforded. 

No doubt Christ is always and everywhere access- 
ible; and He is always the same. Therefore it is 
possible to make a ‘“‘spiritual communion” which 
is in every way as real as a sacramental communion. 
But it is far harder. Our minds are greatly affected 
by our bodies. When with our very bodies we repeat 
the sacrificial act by which the Lord interpreted His 
death, we find ourselves empowered to intend with 
fuller resolve our union with Him in His obedience 
to God. The consecrated elements are quite truly and 
certainly a vehicle of Christ’s Presence to our souls. 

That Presence is given under a form which at once 
indicates that it is given to be received. Any other 


1 Where Christ is at all, there (I hold) He is altogether. To say 
that His Divinity is present elsewhere but His Humanity only in the 
Eucharist seems to me mythology, and nonsense at that. Everywhere 
and always we can have full communion with Him. But he has pro- 
vided a way perfectly suited to our needs and capabilities, and if we 
neglect this our presumption in doing so will hinder our communion 
by other means. 


288 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


use of it seems to me both unauthorized and danger- 
ous. It is dangerous because it suggests that the value 
of the Sacrament is intended to reside in itself.1 But 
this is not so. The Presence is given to be received; 
when received it incorporates us into the Body of 
Christ, so that in the power of His eternal sacrifice 
we may take our allotted share therein, “filling up 
what is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for His 
Body’s sake, which is the Church.”? The proof that 
we have received the Presence is the increase of love 
in our daily lives. 

“Do this.”” Do what? Do the sign, no doubt; 
but only as a means to doing the thing signified. The 
Eucharist is a sacrifice; but we do not offer it; Christ 
offers it; and we, responding to His act, take our 
parts or shares in His one sacrifice as members of 
His Body. The Bread which the Church, by the 
hands of the priest, breaks and gives is the Body of 
Christ, that is, it is the Church itself.* Christ is Priest 
and Victim in the one eternal sacrifice; on earth His 
Body is the Church, and what He does, He does 
through the Church. But the Church is His people. 
Christ In us presents us with Himself to the Father; 
we in Him yield ourselves to be so presented; or to 
put it in other words, Redeeming Love so wins our 

1 This is clearly presupposed by (e. g.,) discussions of the moment 
in digestion at which the Presence is withdrawn, or by any view which 
holds that by receiving the Holy Communion we gain Christ’s Pres- 
ence within us only for a time. See Bishop Gore’s strictures on the 
results involved in such views in The Body of Christ, pp. 121-123. 

2 Colossians, i. 24. 

3 Cf. St. Augustine as quoted by Bishop Gore in The Epistle to the 
Romans, vol. il. pp. 240, 241, and The Body of Christ, pp. 204 ff. 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 289 


hearts that we offer ourselves to be presented by the 
Love that redeems to the Love that created and sus- 
tains both us and all the universe. 

So the reality of our communion with Christ and . 
in Him with one another is the increase of love in our 
hearts. If a man goes out from his Communion to 
love and serve men better he has received the Real 
Presence. If he feels every thrill and tremor of devo- 
tion, but goes out as selfish as before, he has not re- 
ceived it. It was offered, but he did not receive it. 
For all worship is representative, not exclusive. 
We set apart certain places as sacred, not to mark 
other places as profane, but to represent and remind 
us of the sanctity of all places. We set apart certain 
times as sacred, not to mark other times as secular, 
but to represent and remind us of the sanctity of all 
Time. We consecrate certain food and drink, not to 
mark other meals as nonreligious, but to represent 
and remind us of the fact that all our food should build 
us up as members of the Body of Christ. The energy 
which I acquire from food and drink I may use for 
selfishness or for love, for gain or for service; let there 
then be some food—common in its own type—which 
by association with the self-sacrifice of Christ reminds 
me of the only right I have to eat at all, which is that 
I may live for God. 

The Eucharist is the heart of Christian worship. 
* And in it we find the clue to a problem much discussed 
in our time. Is worship in direction and purpose 
objective or subjective? Should we take part in 
worship chiefly in order to give glory to God or chiefly 
in order to win benefit, specially spiritual benefit, for 


290 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


ourselves, whether we think of this chiefly as our own 
separate well-being or our greater devotion in service? 
There is no more practical question than this, for on 
it the whole spirit, and, in the long run, the whole 
custom, of worship depends. Professor Pratt, who 
obviously finds the objective conception of worship 
very difficult, none the less regards it also as funda- 
mental, for “‘the subjective value of prayer is chiefly 
due to the belief that prayer has values which are not 
subjective.” ! He is chiefly, however, concerned with 
prayer, and gives less attention to sacraments. In 
the Eucharist we find the clue, for here the distinction 
of subjective and objective is plainly a distinction of 
aspects only. In the experience itself, which is the 
spiritual reality of the service, there is a gift objec- 
tively offered by God and subjectively received by 
man; the gift is such that man’s reception of it is 
identically his: offering himself to God, for it is the 
very energy of self-sacrifice which is offered and re- 
ceived. Is this act subjective or objective? Plainly, 
it is neither exclusively; but it is both in combination. 
It is a supreme instance of actual value, which consists 
as we Saw in a system of valuable object and appreciat- 
ing mind related to each other in a perfect correspond- 
ence.’ 

It is with this in mind as the norm of worship or 
religious experience that we turn to other forms of 
worship, where the emphasis is predominantly on one 
aspect or the other. In meditation the subjective 
aspect predominates; it is the effort to appropriate 
individually the truth of God. But there could be 


1 Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, p. 236. SCT De 251 


eee eee ee eee eee 


WORSHIPS AND SACRAMENTS 291 


no sane meditation unless there were an objective 
truth of God on which to meditate. In intercession 
the objective aspect predominates, but there can be 
no intercession where there is no subjective love and 
supplication. Perhaps it is because of the objective 
results aimed at in Intercession that this form of 
worship is specially attacked by those for whom the 
aim of worship is merely subjective benefit. The 
facts are against them, and their theory is very diffi- 
cult. If we avoid the manifest absurdities of material- 
ism and the equally manifest absurdities of dualism, 
we must expect to find that very strong will-effort 
directed upon any human being will affect that human 
being. The limits of such activity of one soul upon 
another, just as the limits of the power of spirit over 
matter, we are learning to regard as far wider than 
our fathers conceived. If there is a God, we shall 
expect that our will-effort directed upon another 
through the divine wisdom and love will have still 
greater effect. Moreover, since the whole spiritual 
relationship of man to God is such that God will only 
release His full energy of beneficence in answer to our 
trust in Him, that is to say, there are blessings which 
He will not confer until we ask Him (for otherwise He 
would either make us self-reliant instead of reliant on 
God, or else would over-ride our wills and negate our 
freedom), it follows that by intercession we release an 
energy of God which takes our will-effort into itself 
in its beneficent activity. About the results no one 
who has made a habit of methodical intercession can 
have any doubt; and the world cannot be so co- 
incidental as all that! 


292 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


But while reverent and trusting intercession is a 
practical force of proved objective efficacy, it is not 
the completest form of human worship. It is a way 
of bringing things to pass in the process of time. In 
our highest worship we are lifted into some appre- 
hension of the Eternal, in such a way that the ethical 
purposes of Time are not left behind, but are part of 
the warp and woof of the experience of the ‘‘moment 
eternal.” To this we are brought in the Eucharist. 
It is rooted in past history, for it is essentially a repeti- 
tion of a historic action; it issues in the life of service 
for the future coming of the Kingdom of God; but 
it holds that past and that future together in a present 
realization of the eternal, truly given and truly re- 
ceived. 


NOTE 


ON SOME ASPECTS OF EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE 
AND CONTROVERSY 


It seems to be time for a new attempt to define, how- 
ever provisionally, some of the terms chiefly current in 
Eucharistic controversy. In the text (p. 240) some 
reference is made to the difficulties attendant upon 
the word Present. Perhaps it is really enough to say 
that Present is the opposite of Absent. Under what 
circumstances is a person ‘‘present’’? Plainly, he 
is “‘present” if he is in the same room; but would 
he still be ‘‘present”’ if a thick glass screen were inter- 
posed, so that though still visible he ceased to be 
audible? !_ At least such a circumstance would modify 
1 T owe the illustration to the Rev. L. W. Grensted. 





WORSHIPS AND SACRAMENTS 293 


his “‘presence.”’ We do not usually speak of a friend 
as “‘present”’ if he speaks to us over the telephone, so 
that we hear his voice but do not see his form. “ Pres- 
ent,” though primarily a spatial or temporal term, 
always turns out to mean accessible or apprehensible. 
The doctrine of the Real Presence is the assertion that 
by means of the consecrated elements Christ is really 
and fully accessible to us and apprehensible by us. 

But what is said to be ‘‘present” is the Body and 
Blood of Christ. In what sense are these words used? 
Christ said of the Bread, “This is my Body”; and 
of the Cup, “This is my Blood of the new covenant.” 
Those words as used now must have their meaning 
determined by their first use when the Lord Himself 
uttered them. At that time He actually stood before 
His disciples in the flesh and blood of His Incarnation. 
This makes it, as I think, utterly impossible to inter- 
pret them of that same Body of flesh and blood risen, 
ascended, and glorified, though such a view has high 
authority.!. However much the complete subordina- 
tion of the Glorified Body to the Spirit released it 
from all carnality and spatial limitation, so that it can 
now be given to the faithful in communion, yet this 
cannot be said of the archetypal Eucharist which the 
Lord Himself celebrated in the night in which He was 
betrayed; and what cannot be true of that Eucharist 
cannot be true of ours. 

Yet the profoundly impressive words were spoken 
and cannot be dismissed as mere metaphor; and there 
are other recorded words (in St. John vi.) where 
“flesh” takes the place of “body,” and it is declared 

1 Cf, Gore, The Body of Christ, pp. 61, 62, 98, 126-30. 


204 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


to be necessary to ‘‘eat the flesh of the Son of man 
and to drink His blood.” Plainly this does not imply 
anything cannibalistic; that is guarded against by 
the explanation that ‘flesh and blood” stand for 
“spirit and life’; yet if they only meant what these 
latter terms are commonly understood to mean, there 
was no reason to introduce the earlier and very diffi- 
cult phrase. 

Bishop Gore suggests that “by His flesh we under- 
stand the spiritual principle or essence of His manhood 
as distinguished from its material constituents, and 
by His blood, according to the deeply-rooted Old 
Testament idea, the ‘life thereof’—the human life 
of Jesus of Nazareth in His glory.””+ For devotional 
purposes (which are here far the most important) this 
exposition is completely satisfactory; but I confess 
that it does not help me towards understanding. The 
meaning given to the words, especially to “flesh,” 
is far from natural. 

Of course, Bishop Gore explains most clearly that 
the objective Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is 
spiritual and is spiritually received; that is, it is 
received into the soul by faith, not into the body by 
the mouth.” But this does not remove the difficulties. 

The medieval Church attempted to overcome them 
by the doctrine of Transubstantiation. This rests, of 
course, on the distinction between substance and 
accident. ‘‘Substance” for this theory is wholly 
imperceptible; all that is perceptible in the Bread 
remains unchanged, but the Substance of the Body 
of Christ is substituted for the Substance of the Bread. 


10. cit. p. 25. 2 Op cit. pp. 65, 143-4. 








WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 205 


No one now uses this method of thought; in this book 
we have seen reason to think that what St. Thomas 
ought to have meant when he said “substantia” was 
what we mean when we say “Value”; though, of 
course, he did not mean this. The only entity in any 
object distinguishable from the sum-total of the 
“accidents” is, I submit, its value. If Transub- 
stantiation means Transvaluation the objections to it 
partly disappear; otherwise they are very formidable. 
For this doctrine has to deny the continued existence 
of the Substance of the Bread; and so, as Article 
XXVIII. accurately says, it “ overthroweth the nature 
of a Sacrament.” Latter on an attempt was made by 
Lutherans to escape this difficulty by the notion of 
Consubstantiation—that is, that the Substance of 
Bread remains, the Substance of the Body of Christ 
being added thereto. This has the right devotional 
value; but, unfortunately, it is nonsense. The Acci- 
dents could not inhere in two Substances at once. 
The doctrine of Consubstantiation was only possible 
because the categories of Substance and Accident 
were ceasing to be a part of the furniture of living 
thought, and the term Substance was beginning to be 
used with all the vagueness of the modern term Real- 
ity, which often turns out on investigation to stand 
for Meaning or Value. If, however, “substance” is 
understood to mean Value the objections to Consub- 
stantiation also disappear. ‘‘Convaluation” is, in 
fact, just what is wanted. The Bread still has the 
value of Bread; it has also the value of the Body of 
Christ.? 

1 The difficulties in which the subject was involved in the sixteenth 


296 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


It should be noted that the ordinary connotation 
of the word “‘body” has been immensely affected by 
the science of organic chemistry, which is a very 
recent science. Most people of to-day, when hearing 
such a phrase as “‘the substance of the body,” would 
think at once of chemical “‘substances’’—nitrogen, 
oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and the like. Of course, 
these are among the “accidents” of scholastic termi- 
nology; and no theologian would, I imagine, ever have 
asserted a physico-chemical continuity between the 
Body of our Lord in His earthly ministry and the 
Body which is offered to the faithful in the Eucharist. 
Even if it be held that the Body thus offered is the 
Glorified Body, it must be remembered that this is 
conceived as so transmuted as to be no longer a 
physico-chemical entity at all. 

We have admitted that this view has high author- 


century are vividly represented by the Black Rubric, even in the form 
in which it still appears in our Prayer Book. There we read that 
“the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven 
and not here; it being against the truth of Christ’s natural Body to 
be at one time in more places than one.” In Heaven, and not here! 
so completely was the mind of that period obsessed by the form of 
space. Heaven is indeed “not here” so long as ‘‘here” is peopled 
by spirits disobedient to God; but no one, we may suppose, now thinks 
of Heaven as a place “elsewhere,” and exclusive of “here.” No 
doubt if it is to be answered that Christ’s Body is still subject to 
spatial conditions in such a sense that if it is “here” it is “‘not there,” 
and if it is “‘there” it is ‘‘not here,” then to assert its presence on 
countless altars is to talk nonsense. But this view involves astronom- 
ical difficulties; for if Christ’s Body exists under that spatial mode, 
where is it? We mention this controversy, however, only to illustrate 
the additional perplexities of theologians in the period of the Reforma- 
tion, for, as has been made clear, we do not hold that the Eucharistic 
Body of Christ is the Body of His Ascension. 











WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 204 


ity; on the whole it would seem that no other view has 
anything like the same weight of authority; moreover, 
it has a great spiritual significance to which we shall 
attend shortly. Yet it is open to the fatal objection 
already made; when Christ, in His natural Body, 
said to the disciples as He administered the Bread, 
“This is my Body,” He cannot have meant “This 
is my risen, ascended, and glorified Body,” nor cer- 
tainly can He have meant that the Bread was His 
physical organism, or that the Cup contained the 
Blood then circulating in His veins. I think it is 
possible to see how the misconception arose. Jeremy 
Taylor, in an often quoted passage, gives the clue: 
“In the explication of this question it is much insisted 
upon that it be inquired whether, when we say we 
believe Christ’s body to be ‘really’ in the sacrament, 
we mean that body, that flesh, that was born of the 
Virgin Mary, that was crucified, dead, and buried. 
I answer, I know none else that He had or hath.” ! 

But He has another Body—the Church. And 
St. Paul in one place speaks of the Church as His 
Body in so close proximity to his account of the insti- 
tution of the Eucharist that the two thoughts must 
have been present together in his mind (x Cor. xi. 
23-28; xii. 27). The fact is that the thought of the 
Church as the Body of Christ, for all its prominence 
in Pauline doctrine, never gained a hold upon the 
general belief of Christians at all comparable to that 
gained by the thought of the consecrated Bread as 
His Body. St. Augustine indeed brings them to- 
gether, but this is recognized as a peculiarity of his 

1The Real Presence, §§1, 11. Quoted by Gore, op. cit. p. 62. 


298 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


teaching. Bishop Gore follows St. Augustine in this, 
and lays great stress on the fellowship of the Church. 
But he places the two thoughts in a sequence which, 
though certainly legitimate, is not inevitable or re- 
quired by Scripture—‘‘by receiving His body from 
above we are to become His body on earth.” ! If by 
“body” we mean “‘spirit’—(‘‘the spiritual principle 
or essence of His manhood’’) >—no objection can be 
raised to this; but that makes the use of language very 
strange. 

It is easy to see why the thought of the Eucharistic 
Bread as the Lord’s Body was, and is, more vivid than 
that of the Church as His Body. The Church of our 
experience mediates His Spirit very imperfectly 
because its ““members” are not wholly yielded to His 
control. In the Eucharist the worshiper experiences 
an actual fellowship with his Lord such as he does not 
experience from Church-membership in general. In 
the Eucharist we find what we ought to find, but as 
yet do not find, in the Church that celebrates the 
Eucharist. Here for the mystic moment, perfection 
is attained; one day, when the Church’s task is com- 
plete, that perfection will be actualized in the King- 
dom of God. Meanwhile our contention is that when 
St. Paul called the Church the Body of Christ he used 
the words in just the same sense as when he called the 
Eucharistic Bread the Body of Christ. And inasmuch 
as apart from the Resurrection there would have been 
no perpetual commemoration of the Death (for there 
would have been no Church to commemorate it), and 
what we become partakers of is the Life Eternal which 

1QOp. cit. p. 286. 2 Op. cit. p. 25. 





WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 299 


has risen out of death, triumphing over it, we see how 
appropriate devotionally is the association of the 
- Eucharistic Bread with the Glorified Body of the 
Lord. Perhaps the transposition of an adjective is 
all that is needed. ‘That Bread is not itself the Glo- 
rified Body of the Lord, but it is the Body of the 
Glorified Lord—the Body of Christ who is known to 
us as crucified, risen, ascended, glorified. 

There are, then, ran two distinct uses of the 
term “Body” as regards our Lord. ‘There is His 
fleshly Body, and there is the Church. Our suggestion 
is that there is a third use, as distinct from each of 
these as they are from one another; there is His fleshly 
Body, there is the Church, and there is the Eucharistic 
Bread. 

What, after all, is “my body’? It is an organism 
which moves when I wish it to move. If I will my 
hand to move, it moves without my thinking how to 
set it in motion; if I will anything else to move, it 
remains unmoved unless with my body I lift it. “My 
body” is that part of the physical world which moves 
directly in response to my will, and is thus the vehicle 
and medium whereby I effect my purposes. In pre- 
cisely this sense the Church is the Body of Christ; 
in precisely this sense (I suggest) the Eucharistic 
Bread is the Body of Christ. The identity which 
justifies the use of one name is an identity of relation 
to the Spirit of Christ and to His disciples. As through 
the physical organism which was His Body Christ 
spoke the words of eternal life, so through the Church 
which is His Body He speaks them still. As through 
the physical organism which was His Body He re- 


300 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


vealed in agony and death that utter obedience of 
Humanity in His Person to the Father, which is 
the atoning sacrifice, so through the broken Bread 
He shows it still and enables us to become participants 
therein. Thus by means of Bread and Wine, blessed 
and given as by Himself at the climax of His sacrifice, 
He offers us His human nature given in sacrifice 
(Body broken and Blood outpoured) to be the suste- 
nance of our souls. 

The objector will say, ‘‘This reduces everything 
to mere symbolism.” ‘To symbolism—yes; the word 
‘“‘mere”’ is question-begging and probably represents 
a misunderstanding. In the physical universe sym- 
bolism is the principle of existence. Each lower 
stratum of Reality exists to be the vehicle of the 
higher. The organism which was Christ’s Body in 
His earthly ministry derived the significance entitling 
it to that name from the fact that it was the instru- 
ment and vehicle—the effective symbol—of His 
Spirit. The Eucharistic Bread is His Body for the 
purpose for which it is consecrated, which is Com- 
munion, In exactly the same sense as that in which a 
physico-chemical organism was once His Body; it is 
the vehicle—the effective symbol—of His Personality. 
The identity which makes it appropriate to speak of 
our Lord’s fleshly organism, the Church, and the 
Eucharistic Bread by one name—the Body of the 
Lord—is an identity of relation to His Personality on 
the one hand and to His disciples on the other.! The 

1T have been asked how I should put this before “simple people.” 


It does not seem very difficult. I should say something like this. 
“When in faith you receive the Bread and the Wine you receive the 


WORSHIP AND SACRAMENTS 301 


addition of the outpoured Blood makes it plain that 
it is the symbol of His Personality as offered in sacri- 
fice. As we receive His sacrificial Personality we 
become able to take our part in the one sacrifice, 
which is the self-offering of humanity to God. 


Lord Jesus Christ into your soul as truly as those who opened their 
doors to Him in Palestine received Him into their homes.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE ATONEMENT 


““O Captain of the wars, whence won Ye so great scars? 
In what fight did Ye smite, and what manner was the foe? 
Was it on a day of rout they compassed Thee about, 
Or gat Ye these adornings when Ye wrought their overthrow?” 


“Twas on a day of rout they girded Me about, 

They wounded all My brow, and they smote Me through the side: 
My hand held no sword when I met their arméd horde, 

And the conqueror fell down, and the Conquered bruised his pride.” 


* * * * . 


“What is Thy Name? Oh, show! ’—‘‘My Name ye may not know; 
*Tis a going forth with banners, and a baring of much swords: 
But My titles that are high, are they not upon My thigh? 
‘King of Kings!’ are the words, ‘Lord of Lords!’ 
It is written ‘King of Kings, Lord of Lords.’ ” 
FRANCIS ,THOMPSON. 


Our whole position is threatened with ruin by the fact 
of Evil. We have taken value, conceived as a perfect 
co-relation of subject and object, as the constitutive 
principle or true ‘‘substance”’ of all things. But this 
only intensifies the urgency of the problem of Evil, 
which always threatens to overwhelm Theism of any 
kind. If God is good, and God made the world, why 
is there evil in the world? I have attempted some 


THE ATONEMENT 303 


discussion of the main outlines of the problem else- 
where; ! here we are concerned with it only from the 
point of view of a Value-metaphysic which finds its 
center in the historic Incarnation of God in Jesus 
Christ. We shall therefore not repeat the argument 
which leads to the conclusion that evil, in principle, 
may be justified by the fact that it affords the occasion 
for a higher form of good (such as heroism and moral 
victory) than would be possible without it. It is 
enough to insist that this argument does not merely 
claim that the positive value of the resultant good is 
greater than the negative value of the evil, so that 
on the balance good predominates; what it claims 
is that the facts or episodes which are evil in them- 
selves can become constituent elements of the absolute 
good.? 

The philosophic treatment of evil often seems to 
the religious man singularly inept. It appears to take 
a cold abstraction which it merges in a system that 
absorbs it, and substitutes this for the washing of the 
sin-stained soul in the Blood of the Son of God. But 
there is no real conflict here between religion and 
philosophy. The interest of religion is mainly prac- 
tical, to overcome the evil that exists. The interest 
of philosophy is mainly theoretic, to show that the 

1In Mens Creatrix, pp. 261-92. This chapter has been criticized 
as a very inadequate statement of the Christian solution. It cer- 
tainly is; but my critics failed to notice that it is avowedly a state- 
ment of the problem and its solution in terms of a general philosophy, 
without regard to Christian revelation, which in that book is first 
introduced in the following chapter. 


2 Cf. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value, Lecture 
vi., and The Value and Destiny of the Individual, Lectures vi. and vii. 


304 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


evil when overcome is justified.t It is to be noticed 


that even from the standpoint of philosophy the 
religious interest is the more important; if evil, when 
overcome, is justified, the business of primary impor- 
tance is to overcome it. Part of the disappointment 
of religious folk with philosophy in this connection is, 
however, due to another cause. ‘The religious man 
is concerned with the problem of evil chiefly as a 
problem of sin and its forgiveness; but this concern at 
once assumes the view-point, or level of thought, of 
a man who is by his sin alienated from God. It is 
therefore a mockery to speak to such a man from the 
view-point of the unity of all things in God, unless he 
is first told how he may himself recover that unity 
with God, and therewith the apprehension of the 
world and life which it makes possible. For this 
reason the Atonement is commonly thought of as only 
a means to the Forgiveness of Sins; it is in fact much 
more than that; it is the mode of the Deity of God. 
But for men it is first the means to forgiveness, and 
must be understood as such before its deeper meaning 
can be apprehended. 

The very notion of forgiveness presupposes an 
alienation, a severed unity. Man as sinner stands 
over against his Creator; we are back on the level of 
“justice” —of claims and counterclaims; God is 
Other than man, and demands from man his due. 
And this is sheer fact. No theory of Atonement which 
merely denies this alienation or otherness between 


1 How passionate the impulse of philosophy can be even when its 
form of expression is at its coldest all sympathetic readers of Spinoza 
are aware. 


THE ATONEMENT 305 


God and man can begin to be satisfactory. The 
alienation is spiritual fact. The first need is not to 
deny it, but to end it. The unity of God and man 
must be reconstituted in me before I can look on God’s 
creation from God’s view-point and find it very good; 
and as I belong partly to ‘‘the world,” this can never 
completely happen, at least in “this age”; only by 
faith, not by actual attainment, can I conceive the 
world as God sees it, though I may hope hereafter to 
have ‘‘the fruition of the glorious God-head.”’ 

Philosophy itself is profoundly concerned about 
this practical problem. It may proclaim the perfec- 
tion of the Absolute, and declare that in the temporal 
conquest of evil the eternal perfection consists. But 
if so, it assumes that in some way the evil can be 
conquered. Forgiveness, we shall see, is bound up 
with this conquest. What is the Christian doctrine 
of Forgiveness? 

We begin with the teaching of our Lord. This 
need not here be dealt with at length, for no one can 
read the Synoptic Gospels without noticing its prom- 
inence. Many of the miracles of healing are ac- 
companied by declarations of forgiveness of sins; 
the claim to make such a declaration was one of the 
first occasions for accusation against our Lord by the 
religious leaders of the time. The Fourth Gospel 
does not anywhere use the words “forgiveness” or 
“forgive”; but, as we have received it, it contains 
the words spoken to the adulteress: “Neither do I 
condemn thee; go and sin no more.” ‘The classical 
expression of our Lord’s teaching is of course the 
parable of the Prodigal Son. Its significance is lumi- 


306 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


nously clear. The son is allowed to take his patrimony 
and go his own way; the father does not in any smallest 
degree curtail his liberty; when he is gone, the father 
longs for his return, and shows as soon as his son 
approaches that he has always been ready to restore 
him to the old relationship; but he does not send for 
him or fetch him; he waits until the son comes to 
himself and makes up his own mind to return as a 
penitent. Dr. Rashdall is perfectly right when he 
says that the plain teaching of the parable is that God 
freely forgives all who repent, and that the rest of the 
teaching of our Lord accords with this.! 

But what our Lord said must not be separated from 
what He did; and what He did supplies an answer 
to two problems that arise immediately in connection 
with the doctrine of free forgiveness conditioned only 
by repentance. The first of these is the question how 
forgiveness can be freely given without loss to the 
majesty of the moral law. The second Is the question 
how, if repentance is the condition of forgiveness, that 
condition is in fact to be fulfilled. To those two 
questions the Cross gives the answer. 

The great doctrine of the Atonement has suffered 
more, perhaps, than any fundamental doctrine of the 
Christian faith from the pendulum-swing of human 
thought as it sways from one reaction to another. 
Let us then make a few points clear at the outset. (1) 
No doctrine can be Christian which starts from a con- 
ception of God as moved by any motive alien from 
holy love. If it is suggested by any doctrine of the 
Atonement that the wrath of God had quenched or 

1 The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, pp. 25 ff. 


THE ATONEMENT 307 


even obscured His love before the atoning sacrifice was 
offered by Jesus Christ, that doctrine is less than 
Christian. The starting-point in the New Testament 
is never the wrath of God but always His love. ‘‘God 
commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while 
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” ‘‘God so 
loved the world that He gave His only-begotten 
One: 

(2) Forgiveness does not consist of remission of 
penalty. So long as we think of it in that way, we 
show that we have not reached the Christian relation- 
ship to God. When a child who has done wrong says 
to his father, ‘‘Please forgive me,” he does not only 
mean, “Don’t punish me”; he also means, “Please 
let us be to each other as if I had not done it.” If I 
have injured my friend and ask him to forgive me, 
I am not asking him to refrain from prosecuting me; 
I am asking him to let our friendship stand unbroken 
in spite of what I have done. To forgive is to restore 
to the old relationship. It is because men have pic- 
tured God’s judgment of souls so much in the likeness 
of the courts of earthly justice that this has been so 
often obscured. The prisoner in the dock has never 
been in any close relationship with the judge on the 
bench. He is not occupied with anxious thoughts 
concerning the grief which his misconduct may have 
caused to that worthy fellow-citizen; his only concern 
with the judge is to know what the judge is going to 
inflict upon him. If we think so of our responsibility 
before God, we have not taken up our position as 
Christians at all. ‘You did not receive a spirit of 

1 Romans v. 8; St. John iii. 16. 


308 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


slavery to relapse into fear, but you received a spirit 
of adoption, in which we cry Abba, Father.” ! The 
slave has his orders and is punished if he disobeys; his 
only feeling when he has done wrong is fear. The son 
knows his father’s love, and calls upon him by the 
name of endearment. So the forgiveness that Christ 
wins for us is not chiefly a remission of penalty; it is 
the restoration to the affectionate intimacy of sons 
with their Father. And it is for this that the Father 
longs. 

(3) None the less, there is a rea] antagonism of God 
against the sinner so long as he continues in his sin. 
It is true, of course, that God loves the sinner while 
He hates the sin. But that is a shallow psychology 
which regards the sin as something merely separate 
from the sinner, which he can lay aside like a suit of 
clothes. My sin is the wrong direction of my will; 
and my will is just myself so far as I am active. If 
God hates the sin, what He hates is not an accretion 
attached to my real self; it is myself, as that self now 
exists. He knows I am capable of conversion, and 
desires not the death of the sinner but rather that he 
should be converted and live; in that most true sense, 
He loves me even while I sin; but it cannot be said 
too strongly that there is a wrath of God against me 
as sinning; God’s Will is set one way and mine is set 
against it. There is a collision of wills; and God’s Will 
is not passive in that collision. There is an antago- 
nism of God against me—not indeed an ill-will towards 
me, for what He wills is my good—but most certainly 
a contrary will actively opposing me. And, therefore, 


1 Romans viii. 15. 


THE ATONEMENT 309 


though he longs to forgive, He cannot do so unless 
either my will is turned from its sinful direction into 
conformity with His, or else there is at work some 
power which is capable of effecting that change in me. 
To forgive is to restore to the old intimacy; there can 
be no intimacy between God and me in so far as I set 
my will against His. Moreover, I am only one of His 
family. He cannot restore me to the freedom of the 
family if there is ill-will in me against the other mem- 
bers of it.1 Our tendency to draw illustrations from 
the law-courts makes us think of forgiveness concern- 
ing each of us singly; but that is false both to fact and 
to Christian principle. Consequently, so long as there 
is ill-will in me there is an antagonism on His side to 
be ended as well as on mine. It is of my making, but 
it exists in Him and not only in me. It is not anger, 
if by anger we mean the emotional reaction of an 
offended self-concern; it is anger, if by anger we mean 
the resolute and relentless opposition of a will set on 
righteousness against a will directed elsewhere. God 
must abolish all sinners; but He seeks to abolish 
sinners by winning them out of their sin into the 
loyalty and love of children in their Father’s home. 

(4) It is congruous with what has just been said 
that we should remind ourselves that our Lord came 
to save His people from their sins and not merely from 
the punishment of their sins. It is only through pre- 
occupation with thoughts of punishment that people 


1So a father might say to a son who had quarreled with both the 
father and a brother, and after leaving the home in a rage was anxious 
to return—“T am willing to have you back, but can you be friends 
with Jack?” This point is referred to again on p. 265. 


310 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


have come to invent doctrines of transferred penalty. 
Of course, it is true that if we are not sinners God will 
not treat us as if we were; and if by His suffering 
Christ has won us out of our sin, then by His suffering 
He has delivered us from the suffering that would 
have been the result of our continuance in sin. But it 
would be monstrous to speak of this as a transference 
of penalty. The Atonement is accomplished by the 
drawing of sinful souls into conformity with the divine 
Will. 

We can now turn back to the two problems that 
arise out of our Lord’s proclamation of God’s free 
forgiveness on the sole condition of repentance. The 
first of these was the question, How can forgiveness 
be freely given without detriment to the majesty of 
the moral law? If, as soon as I repent, God welcomes 
me back to intimacy, does it not seem as though He 
had not greatly cared about my sin? This is the real 
root of all the theories of vicarious punishment which 
have so grievously offended the most sensitive Chris- 
tian consciences. ‘Those theories represent a wrong 
way of setting forth what is itself profoundly true. 
Free forgiveness is immoral if it is lightly given. Itisa 
part of true love that the father should welcome home 
the returning prodigal; yet the prodigal knew some- 
thing of what the father had suffered through his 
selfishness. But men do not universally understand 
what their selfishness means to the Father in Heaven. 
The promise of free forgiveness on condition of re- 
pentance to men so blind and callous as we are would 
be demoralizing. It could only be safely given by One 
who was also to lay bare the heart of God and show 


THE ATONEMENT 311 


what sin means to Him, and therefore how righteous 
as well as deep is the love from which the forgiveness 
flows. 

For if the God who forgives suffers under the im- 
pact of sin in a fashion that requires Gethsemane 
and Calvary for its manifestation, it is impossible to 
say that He forgives through indifference. No one 
who hears the word which pronounces his pardon 
from the lips of the Crucified will be for a moment 
tempted to say, ““He does not mind.” Therefore the 
Cross, by showing what sin costs God, safeguards His 
righteousness while He forgives. On the Cross God 
set forth His Son ‘‘to be a means of propitiation, 
through faith, by His life offered in sacrifice, to show 
Himself as righteous and as making righteous him 
that has faith in Jesus.” 1 St. Paul regards the for- 
bearance of God in the past as having imperiled His 
righteousness; but that righteousness is now fully 
vindicated by the Cross, which reveals the antago- 
nism between God and sin. And this is what is re- 
quired. There are two ways of expressing antagonism 
to sin; one is to inflict suffering on the sinner, the other 
is to endure suffering. Either repels the charge of — 
moral indifference. 

In choosing to show His righteousness by enduring 
pain and manifesting His endurance of it, God acted 
in the one way by which the other condition of per- 
fectly righteous forgiveness can be fulfilled; that is, 
that the sinner be won from his sin to righteousness, 
from selfishness to love. Here experience can guide 
us. There is no doubt at all that the Cross of Christ 


1 Romans iii. 25, 26. I have paraphrased the word “Blood.” 


giz CHRIST THE TRUTH 


has been His chief means of drawing men into fellow- 
ship with Himself. For St. Paul union with Christ 
is something so complete and intimate that whatever 
may be said to have befallen Him has befallen the 
disciple also;! and this makes it forever impossible 
to describe his doctrine fairly as substitutionist. But 
it is on the moment of Death and Resurrection that 
this sense of union is concentrated. Whether or not 
our Lord actually spoke the words in St. Matthew’s 
Gospel at the distribution of the Cup at the Last 
Supper, experience shows that the shedding of Christ’s 
blood was indeed ‘‘for the remission of sins” in the 
sense that by His Passion they have been drawn to 
God and have received forgiveness. 

All of this does not exactly amount to saying that 
the Death of Christ was a propitiatory sacrifice; but . 
it does, as I think, prove that the Death of Christ 
fulfilled the aspirations previously expressed in such 
sacrifices, and I have no doubt at all that the Lord 
Himself intended to direct our thoughts to perceive 
this by the act which He performed at the Last Supper 
and the words by which He both marked this act as 
sacrificial and connected it with His Death, which 
took place on the following day. 

We are at present dealing with the Atonement only 
in so far as it concerns the forgiveness of the sins of 
men. There is a wider range to be covered before 
we appreciate the full depth of that mystery. ‘‘It 
was the good pleasure of the Father that in him should 
all the fullness dwell, and through him to reconcile 
all things unto himself, having made peace through 


1 Romans vi. 1-11; 2 Corinthians v. 14; Colossians iii. 1-3. 


THE ATONEMENT 313 


the blood of his cross; through him, I say, whether 
things upon the earth or things in the heavens.” ! 
The fact that in human history the Atonement takes 
the form of the Passion is largely due to human sin. 
But human history is only an episode in the cosmic 
process, and the Divine Self-sacrifice, wherein is 
expressed the Love which is the inner heart of the 
Universe and its supreme Law, has a range of efficacy 
far beyond human history. What constitutes the 
problem is not only the sins of men, but also what 
St. John calls the “sin of the world” (cosmos). The 
words with which our Lord ended the discourse pre- 
paring His disciples for the Passion were, ‘‘I have 
conquered the universe”: éyw veviknka Tov KOopoP. 
What is set before us in the Cross of Christ is not 
merely the reaction of the Divine Nature to human 
sin; 1t is the unveiling of a mystery of the Divine 
Life itself—the revelation of the cost whereby God 
wins victory over the evil which He had permitted, 
and thereby makes more glorious than otherwise was 
possible the goodness which triumphs. In so far 
as the term “propitiation” represents something 
objectively accomplished in and by God Himself, 
apart from our forgiveness altogether (though that is 
involved) and even apart from our sins (except in so 
far as these are part of the cosmic evil)—to that extent 
it is the term which of all that are open to us carries 
us furthest into the mystery of the Atonement. 

We may, then, summarize our Lord’s teaching on 
forgiveness by saying that He did indeed proclaim 
God’s free forgiveness of sin on condition of repent- 


1 Colossians i. 19, 20. 


314 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


ance; and He also did what alone could save that 
proclamation from imperilling belief in the divine 
righteousness, by showing in His Passion what men’s 
sin means to God. By showing this He further se- 
cured that all who believe in Him should fulfill the 
condition. After all, others have taught that forgive- 
ness follows repentance; what no other could do was 
to secure that repentance should follow sin. But 
Christ has done this for all who believe that in Him we 
see the Father. Fear of punishment might deter me 
from sinful action, but it could not change my sinful 
desires; on the contrary, it would be more likely to 
intensify them by the action of that psychological law 
described by St. Paul ' which we have lately learned to 
call the Law of Reversed Effort. But to realize what 
my selfishness means to the Father who loves me with 
a love such as Christ reveals, fills me with horror of 
the selfishness and calls out an answering love. The 
non-Christian may say, “‘Yes, God will forgive me if 
I can repent; but what can make me repent?” The 
Christian answers, “‘By living in the fellowship of 
Jesus Christ, by prayer in His Spirit, by receiving His 
Life in His Sacrament, by practicing His companion- 
ship, I can assure myself of true penitence for every 
sin into which I fall.” 

Thus it is that we plead the sacrifice of Christ. His 
love, shown preéminently in His Death, has trans- 
forming power over all those who open their hearts to 
it. We mean to live in His fellowship; and we know 
that if we do so we shall be transformed into His like- 
ness. It is because we can say first 


1 Romans vii. 7 to end. 


THE ATONEMENT 315 


Look, Father, look on His anointed Face, 
And only look on us as found in Him 


that we can go on to say 


Lo, between our sins and their reward 
We set the Passion of Thy Son, our Lord. 


We plead His Passion, not as a transferred penalty, 
but as an act of self-sacrifice which remakes us in its 
own likeness. Its work on us is not yet perfect. We 
still misuse God’s grace; our prayer is still languid 
and our faith dim. But Christ will perfect His work 
in us, and we ask our heavenly Father to regard us (as 
He Himself wills to regard us) not as the prodigals 
are but as the true brethren of Christ that we are 
becoming. 

There is one feature in our Lord’s teaching about 
forgiveness which we have so far passed over. It is 
indeed misleading to say that Christ proclaims forgive- 
ness upon the sole condition of repentance unless we 
remember how inclusive a term repentance is. For 
He does not anywhere state this condition of divine 
forgiveness, though He does suggest that it may be a 
condition of human forgiveness.!. The condition that 
He Himself lays down is that the sinner who would be 
forgiven must himself forgive any who have injured 
him. This is reiterated with an insistence which is 
unmistakable. The petition for forgiveness in the 
Lord’s Prayer is the only one that has any condition 
attached to it—‘‘Forgive us our debts, as we also 
have forgiven our debtors’”—and the only one on 


1St. Luke xvii. 3, 4; and even here the emphasis is not on the condi- 
tion but on the duty to be ready to forgive repeatedly. 


316 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


which a comment is added: ‘‘For if ye forgive men 
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also for- 
give you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, 
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”’ } 
This comment is reinforced by the parable of the 
unforgiving servant.” 

We saw earlier that the purpose of forgiveness is to 
reconstitute the unity of the divine and the human. 
We now see how it accomplishes this. God’s forgive- 
ness of men and men’s forgiveness of their brothers 
are bound up in each other; and it is not difficult to 
see how this comes to pass. God’s forgiveness is 
restoration to intimate fellowship with God; but 
fellowship with God is fellowship with self-forgetful 
and self-giving Love, of which forgiveness is a neces- 
sary outcome. If we do not forgive, we are not in 
fellowship with God. The repentance, which is the 
condition of God’s free forgiveness, is a turning away 
from our selfish outlook and the adoption of God’s 
outlook, from which forgiveness necessarily proceeds. 
God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of our 
brothers are not related as cause and effect but rather 
as the obverse and reverse of one spiritual fact. They 
are in their own nature indissolubly united. It is not 
by an arbitrary decree that they are associated to- 
gether; they are one thing. And here especially we 
have to remember that we are children before our 
Father. How can the Father take into affectionate 
intimacy with Himself two children who refuse to be 
on friendly terms with one another? He can only 
forgive us, as we forgive our brothers. 

1St. Matthew vi. 12, 14, 15. 2St. Matthew xviii. 21-35. 


THE ATONEMENT 317 


The forgiveness of sins, as an article of the creed, is 
the supreme test of practical Christianity. In a world 
where no injury was ever done, the spirit of Love 
would show itself in maintaining the perfect harmony; 
in~such a world Love would be more truly supreme 
than it is in our world as yet; but also in such a world 
Love would be far less deep and full than it has in our 
world the opportunity to become. To love those who 
love us is beautiful and pleasant, but it is also easy; 
to love those who hate and injure us is very difficult, 
and may be painful, but it is glorious. This is the 
supreme manifestation of the Life of God in humanity. 
Christ exhibited it in the Passion, and He calls us to a 
like heroic love. We are to be perfect in the way that 
our heavenly Father is perfect; but His perfection is 
declared to consist in the indiscriminate love which 
He offers to friend and enemy alike.! If we have 
received the Life Divine which is offered to us in 
Christ, we shal] always readily forgive; and in our 
world this is the chief test of our reality as Christians. 
If we bear malice or feel resentment it is proof that 
we still think like men and not like God.? 

Nothing can exceed our Lord’s emphasis on the 
duty of forgiveness. “If thy brother sin, rebuke 
him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin 
against thee seven times in the day, and seven times 
turn again to thee saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive 
him.” And it is not only until seven times, but 
‘until seventy times seven.” * In other words, we 
are to show an absolute readiness to forgive, which is 


1 St. Matthew vi. 43-48. *CirSt. Mark vii.'33: 
$St. Luke xvii. 3, 4. 4 St. Matthew xviii. 22. 


318 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


undisturbed by any magnitude of the injury done or 
any frequency of its repetition. 

The Forgiveness of Sins is an article of the Creed; 
that is to say, it is one of the constituent parts into 
which the whole organic body of Christian faith may 
be articulated. All the articles of the creed name 
objects of practical trust. When a man says “I 
believe in God” he ought not to mean that after a 
careful review of the evidence he inclines to the 
opinion that there probably exists a Being who may 
not improperly be called God; he ought to mean “‘I 
put my trust in God; I am determined to live in re- 
liance on His love and power.” So the Christian 
trusts in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, and in 
the universal Church, and in the fellowship of the 
saints, and in the resurrection of the body and the life 
everlasting. He is determined to live by confident 
reliance on all these. So, too, when he says that he 
believes in the forgiveness of Sins, he ought not to 
mean that he holds the opinion that God forgives sins, 
but that he believes in forgiving sins as a principle of 
practical life—God’s life and man’s. He puts trust in 
God’s forgiving love; but trusting that as good, he 
must needs imitate it; and therefore he trusts also the 
excellence and power of forgiveness in human affairs. 
For as we have seen, and as our Lord has taught us, 
God’s forgiveness of us cannot be separated from our 
forgiveness of one another. We must forgive even as 
God forgives. 

But what of the condition attached? The words 
are ‘‘If he repent, forgive him.”’ What if he do not 
repent? “If thy brother sin against thee, go, show 


THE ATONEMENT 319 


him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear 
thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear 
thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the 
mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be 
established. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it 
unto the Church; and if he refuse to hear the Church 
also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the 
publican.” } 

These words must not be isolated any more than 
other words of Christ. It is true that there neither 
can nor ought to be a perfect renewal of former in- 
timacies with those who have injured us and remain 
impenitent. Their attitude evokes an antagonism 
which may be perfectly free from malice. But we 
have no right as Christians to rest content with that 
antagonism. Christ promised forgiveness to those 
who repent, but He also took action to elicit their 
repentance. His Apostle bids us “If thine enemy 
hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.” So 
we shall soften his hard heart as the smith softens the 
iron by heaping upon it coals of fire. ‘Be not over- 
come of evil, but overcome evil with good.” 2 

So if our enemy refuses to repent, we are not to fall 
back on mere retribution. He cannot indeed be 
received into intimate fellowship; he excludes himself 
from that. We are to treat him as a Gentile and a 
publican. And how did Christ treat the Gentile and 
the publican? We seem to need two words—Forgiv- 
ing-ness and Forgiven-ness. God is always forgiving, 
in the sense that he desires to forgive; but we are not 
always forgiven because we persist in the bad self-will 


1 St. Matthew xviii. 15-17. 2 Romans xii. 20, 21, 


320 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


which creates an alienation between us and God. For 
real Forgiveness the action of two wills is needed; it 
cannot be complete till the wrongdoer changes his 
attitude or, in other words, repents. But he may be 
led to do this by the Love shown in his victim’s readi- 
ness to forgive. So forgiving-ness is always a duty; 
but it cannot become true forgiveness unless the in- 
jurer is willing to accept the position of forgiven-ness, 
which always calls for humility, because it involves an 
admission of wrongdoing. 

Really the Christian’s duty is quite clear, though it 
is very hard to fulfill, We cannot admit the im- 
penitent injurer to our intimate fellowship, but we 
must long to do so; and we must be ready to go to any 
lengths of self-sacrifice to soften his heart and win 
him first to repentance and thereby to fellowship. 
We shall treat him as a stranger; but we shall lavish 
our kindness on him, especially such kindness as 
costs us dear, in the hope that so we may turn his 
ill-will into goodwill. It is the wisdom and effective- 
ness of such conduct that we proclaim when we say, 
as part of the Christian creed, that we believe in the 
Forgiveness of Sins. The world does not believe in it; 
it believes in punishing sins, and has no other treat- 
ment for them. A Christian world would believe in 
forgiving sins as a matter of practical politics. This 
might or might not include medicinal punishment, 
but it leaves no room for resentment in feeling or 
retribution in action. But none will be able to follow 
in practice this faith in forgiveness except he live in 
the daily companionship of that divine Lover of souls, 
who yearns to draw all into perfect fellowship with 


THE ATONEMENT 321 


Himself, and suffers what we see in Gethsemane and 
on Calvary to draw to Him those whose penitence is 
not yet complete, that they may be restored to inti- 
mate fellowship with Him and in Him with one an- 
other. 

The Forgiveness of Sins is the practical and human 
part of the whole doctrine or fact of Atonement. 
But, as has been seen, that fact is something even 
bigger than the forgiveness of human sin. The method 
and cost by which that forgiveness is wrought and 
made effective reveals new depths in the divine. 
It was only in hesitating figures that men dared to 
conceive the suffering of God, until Christ died; and 
though the heart of man ached for the revelation of 
the Divine Passion, the philosophers would have none 
of it. Aristotle’s “apathetic” God was enthroned 
in men’s minds, and no idol has been found so hard 
to destroy. He reappears in the Greek fathers, and 
in the first of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles. 
There is a highly technical sense in which God, as 
Christ revealed Him, is “without passions”; for He 
is Creator and supreme, and is never “passive” in 
the sense of having things happen to Him except with 
His consent; also He is constant, and free from gusts 
of feeling carrying Him this way and that. His anger 
and His compassion are but the aspect of His holy 
love appropriate to varying circumstances. But the 
term really meant ‘incapable of suffering,” and in this 
sense its predication of God is almost } wholly false. 

1 “Almost” because it is truer to say that there is suffering in God 


than that God suffers. The Greek conception of the impassibility 
of the Divine wrought fearful havoc in the theology of the patristic 


322 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


The revelation of God’s dealing with human sin 
shows God enduring every depth of anguish for the 
sake of His children. What is portrayed under the 
figure of physical suffering and literal blood-shedding 
is only a part of the pain which sin inflicts on God. 
We see Him suffering the absolute frustration of His 
Will. We see Him in the abyss of despair, as perfect 
adherence to right seems to end in utter failure. We 
hear from the Cross the Cry which expresses nothing 
less than the agonized dread that God has failed 
Himself, has failed to be God. No further entry of 
the Supreme God into the tangle and bewilderment 
of finitude can be conceived. All that we can suffer 
of physical or mental anguish is within the divine 
experience; He has known it all Himself. He does 
not leave this world to suffer while He remains at ease 
apart; all the suffering of the world is His. 

But suffering is not the last word. The Cross 
leads to the Resurrection. This is not merely a vic- 
tory which cancels the former defeat; it is a reversal 
which makes defeat itself into the very stuff of victory. 
Christ not only made captives of His enemies, but led 
captivity captive. The Cross, which on the first 
Easter Eve, stood for the failure of good and the 
triumph of evil, has been from the first Easter Day 
onwards the point in which all the triumphant power 
of good is focused. Evil brought Christ to the Cross; 
by the Cross Christ abolishes evil. 


period. If Christ is the revelation of God, then God is not im- 
passible. But to say baldly that He is passible is not true either. 
There is suffering in God, but it is always an element in the joy of the 
triumphant sacrifice. 


THE ATONEMENT 323 


This is possible, of course, because the failure of 
good was apparent only. If Christ had ever thought 
first of self; if He had inverted the prayer in Geth- 
semane, and asked that whatever the Father’s will 
might be the cup might pass from Him; if He had 
left the heights of perfect love and defended Himself 
by force, the force of twelve legions of angels or any 
other—then no Resurrection could have made the 
Cross into the defeat of the defeat of Love. The 
Cross and Resurrection are the perfect triumph of 
the perfect sacrifice of perfect love; and this is set 
before us as the Life of God. 

If so, then all the evil of the world may find its 
justification. We do not see this yet; but we see its 
possibility. God did not will the evil by any specific 
choice; but He willed a world where evil would have 
its place; He willed finite centers of consciousness, 
capable of apprehending value, but not capable (being 
finite) of grasping the one true Value which is God’s 
whole work as God sees it; such creatures were bound 
to exaggerate the importance of the finite values they 
could apprehend, and thus arose self-will which is the 
Fall of Man and sin. Hence sprang hostility and 
bitterness and oppression and war. In the midst of 
the human history largely made of these things came 
the manifestation of the perfect love, which is the ful- 
fillment of all finite Values, because its purpose is the 
harmony of them all. That manifestation calls forth 
the spirit of love in men, by which they can be lifted 
out of their self-centeredness into an answering love. 

Would we have it otherwise? Should we prefer 
a world of perfect but static harmony, with no open- 


324 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


ing for heroism, no occasion for generous forgiveness, 
no endurance of pain on the part of love for the sake of 
those to whom it gives itself? All attempts to con- 
ceive a world in which evil plays no part result in a 
world profoundly unsatisfying to our highest instincts 
—those instincts which lead us to find in Tragedy the 
highest achievement of man’s creative spirit.1 If 
indeed the Cross and Resurrection reveal the nature 
of the world’s totality, then the world answers to our 
highest aspirations and demands. 

This does not mean that the world, as revealed by 
Christ, is actually Tragic. The total impression of 
Tragedy is of nobility wasted, of victory spoiled.” If 
there were no Resurrection the revelation in Christ 
would be tragic. There would still be nobility, but 
to no purpose; there would still be moral victory, 
but despoiled of its fruits. Cross and Resurrection 
together give us Tragedy transmuted into triumph 
as the key to the interpretation of the world. The 
analogy of Tragedy recalls the supreme illustration 
of the alterability of values. In any Drama, and 
preéminently in Tragedy, the value of the opening 
scenes is affected by what follows. The past as fact 
is fixed; ‘‘what is done is done”; but its value is 
not fixed. A man who commits a sin is to all eternity 
the man who committed that sin; but the value of the 
sin is one thing if he remains hard and impenitent, 
and quite another thing if he repents. In the former 
case the sin is the occasion of his perdition; in the 
latter it is the occasion of his forgiveness, with all that 


1Cf, Mens Creatrix, chapter xi, specially pp. 151, 152. 
2 Cf. Mens Creatrix, chapter xi., specially p. 145. 


THE ATONEMENT 325 


joy that only forgiven sinners know. A world into 
which evil has come can never again be a world inno- 
cent of all evil; but it may become a world in which 
evil has been overcome of good—a nobler world than 
one always innocent. So the occurrence of evil in 
the course of history is no obstacle to the eternal per- 
fection; on the contrary, the Love of God makes evil 
a contributory cause of that perfection; and this is 
the Atonement. 

We must needs base our cosmic conception on the 
fragment of Reality which our terrestrial experience 
affords us. If it gives us a clue which may even 
possibly lead to a complete comprehension we must 
be satisfied, for that is the utmost that we can expect. 
What, however, does this tell us concerning the 
Nature of the Supreme Spirit? It tells us that sacrifice 
is the root principle of Reality * because it is the 
characteristic activity of God. Plato found Justice 
as a principle which brought unity into the multiplic- 
ity of the soul, and of society, and (under the name 
of the Idea of Good) of the universe; and Justice for 
him came near to love, for it meant the rendering by 
every capacity or citizen or principle of its own func- 
tion in the economy of the Whole. But it stopped 
short of Love, because it saw no excellence in sacrifice; 
and while all else submitted to the Supreme Principle, 


1 “Tf there is a God whose omnipotence might be defined as being 
equal to any emergency, whose insight could interpret and place all 
evil, and whose passion could consume and transmute it, if, further, 
I can ally myself with Him, so that His power becomes mine, then I 
can see how the universe’s problem and mine can be solved” (C. A. 
Bennett, A Philosophical Study of Mysticism, pp. 161, 162). 

? Cf. the passages from Bosanquet’s Gifford Lectures cited on p. 254. 


326 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


this merely directed, but never submitted itself to, the 
good of its subordinates. No one dared to attribute 
self-sacrifice to Absolute Godhead until Christ died 
upon the Cross. Yet it is just this that is needed to 
make sense of all experience, and to set forth God 
as veritably All-mighty, King not only of conduct but 
of hearts and wills. 

Sacrifice is not always painful;! that depends on 
the response. The form of sacrifice is that one chooses 
for love’s sake to do or to suffer what apart from love 
one would not have chosen to do or to suffer. This is 
painful when the choice of love is made in the face of 
some recalcitrant selfishness that still lingers in the 
soul; and it is painful when the love that prompts 
it is ignored or repulsed. Sometimes, too, it is painful 
by accident, as when a man deliberately faces pain to 
save some one else from pain. But sacrifice expressing 
a love that is returned can be such joy as is not other- 
wise known tomen. Sacrifice is, In our experience, the 
noblest of spiritual qualities and the highest of known 
joys; and sacrifice is, for Christians, the open secret 
of the heart of God. 

So God vindicates His own Deity. Only such a 
God can be the God of the world we know. For the 
Name of God signifies the union of perfect goodness 
and absolute power. We should have to deny the 
one or the other if we could not believe in God as 
revealed in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus. He 
reigns from the Tree. Because, and only because, 
His goodness is so perfect as to include self-sacrifice, 
His power is known to be supreme and all-controlling. 


1 Cf. p. 221 and footnote there. 


CHAPTER XV 


LOVE DIVINE: THE BLESSED TRINITY 


“The Living and True God was from all Eternity, and from all 
Eternity wanted like a God. He wanted the communication of His 
divine essence, and persons to enjoy it. He wanted Worlds, He 
wanted spectators, He wanted Joys, He wanted Treasures. He 
wanted, yet He wanted not, for He had them.’’—TRAHERNE. 


Our argument led us to a belief in God as Creative 
Will, originating and sustaining all that is. As such, 
He has His being apart from all else, and in no way 
depends on the created universe for His existence. He 
is not merely the spiritual aspect of the universe, nor 
the sum of its values, nor even its totality, except in 
the sense that He is the ground of its totality which 
therefore falls within the scope of His will. This is 
what is represented in classical theology by the doc- 
trine that the universe is not of the divine substance 
but proceeds from the divine will. If God ceased to 
be, the universe would immediately cease also; but if 
the universe ceased to be, God would still be God. His 
existence is independent of all else; He zs absolutely. 

This does not mean that creation is capricious, as 
represented in the words attributed to the Almighty 
by the youthful Shelley. 


From an eternity of idleness 
I, God, awoke; in seven days’ toil made earth.! 


1 Shelley, Queen Mab. 


328 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


On the contrary, the Love which prompts creation is 
the very nature of God. Because He is Love, He is 
and must be self-communicating; in principle (é 
apxn) there is, and always was, the Word, eternally 
in close relation with God, eternally God.' In this 
sense the universe is necessary to God. Being God 
He must create. But there is no reciprocal inter- 
dependence. The way in which God is necessary to 
the universe is utterly different from the way in which 
the universe is necessary to God; for in each case the 
ground of the necessity is in God. God is necessary 
to the universe in the sense that apart from God the 
universe would not exist; the universe is not necessary 
to God in that sense at all, it is necessary to God only 
in the sense that, being what He is, His nature leads 
to its creation. 

It is this essential self-utterance of God which St. 
John calls the Word, and the necessity of it, grounded 
in the moral character and being of God, is called the 
eternal generation of the Son. The reasons for at- 
tributing to the Word a distinctness sufficient to 
warrant such an expression will appear later. At 
present the point to notice is that what is rooted in the 
moral character of a spiritual being is that being’s act; 
so that to say the generation of the Word is the act of 
the Father and to say that God is such that He must 
give Himself in love is to say one and the same thing. 
The love in which He gives Himself is known to 
Christians by the name of Holy Ghost. Father, Son, 
Holy Ghost—each name stands for the divine love in 
one of its necessary aspects. 

1St. John i. 1. 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY = 329 


But these are not only aspects. The Father is the 
ground or fountain of all being, and in Him all is 
implicit; to Him all is present. But “‘present’’ is 
here a misleading term, used only because the limita- 
tions of human experience and language prevent the 
discovery of a better. ‘‘Present” is distinguished 
from past and future; and when we say that to God 
the Father all is present, we inevitably suggest to our 
minds the thought of One who zow comprehends the 
future. But that is precisely what is not intended. 
Now means not then; then means not now; but it is 
neither then nor now that God comprehends all time; 
it is eternally.! This is something altogether beyond 
our apprehension, but our experience is not so utterly 
lacking in analogues that we can attach no meaning to 
the words. When we watch a play of which we know 
the plot already, we have an artificial imitation of an 
eternal comprehension; we see each episode and action 
in the light not only of its occasion, but of its conse- 
quences. Now imagine that the play is being acted by 
the children of the dramatist, and even composed by 
them as they act it, according to gifts of which he as 
their father is the source, and that he knows them well 
enough to be sure of the general course they will take 
—then his experience, as he watches, is something 
still nearer to the eternal comprehension. Christ 
taught us to think of God as Father, and we can con- 
ceive an ideal father who is a perfect artist in the living 
material of his children, so that, never infringing their 


1Cf. Oh, if indeed that eye foresee 
Or see (in Him is no before). 
TENNYSON, In Memoriam. 


330 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


freedom, he yet can guide them to a harmonious exer- 
cise of it. So we come still closer. It is true that all 
analogies fail; they ought to fail. If we had a con- 
ception of God which made His mode of being per- 
fectly comprehensible to the finite mind, we should 
know for that reason alone that it was false. But we 
have in our experience indications of a superiority to 
Time which show us the intelligible possibility of an 
eternal comprehension, though such comprehension 
is itself for ever beyond our reach.! 

The difficulty of apprehending the divine compre- 
hension of the world would be greater if it were an act 
of contemplation only. But it is not this. God, we 
have found, is Himself active in the process which He 
comprehends. That process is His own self-mani- 
festation, wherein He Himself is active. Israel had 
learned to trace His activity in the events of the nation’s 
history; Christians have learned supremely to find His 
positive act in the Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection, 
and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and the subsequent 
gift of spiritual power to His disciples. But in that 
supreme act of self-revelation we do not find One 
remote from all forms of trouble or exempt from dis- 
appointment. We see Him pleading, sometimes in 
vain; loaded with the weight of disappointment; 
amazed at the path marked out for Him; overwhelmed 
with despair. God, who eternally grasps the whole 


1 Coleridge says that the only safe form of the doctrine of Omni- 
presence is, not that God is present to all things, but that all things 
are present to God. 

This, perhaps, helps us further to see what is meant by an eternal 
comprehension. 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY = 331 


universe that He has created in all its extent of space 
and time, also acts at a particular part of space under 
the conditions of time, and so acting His struggle and 
effort are profoundly real—so real that.in time and 
for a time they are sometimes genuinely frustrated; 
if any soul is ultimately lost then God’s purpose for 
that soul is finally frustrated. 

Now we must use human language and human 
thoughts, because we have no other; and it is clear at 
once that while God, as we have been led to conceive 
Him, is certainly personal, He is as certainly not a 
Person. To attribute to a Person at once the eternal 
comprehension of the universe and the disappoint- 
ment of Jesus Christ over Jerusalem or His cry of 
desolation on the Cross is to talk nonsense. It is one 
God; but it is two Persons—so far as human terms 
have any applicability at all. Here we find the ground 
for that degree of distinctness in the divine Word or 
self-manifestation of God in time, which makes it 
appropriate to speak of Him as begotten of the Father 
rather than as merely emanating from the Father. 

Before all worlds, or eternally, He is begotten of 
the Father. Into this world He was born. It was no 
act of man that led to His birth. It was that active 
energy of Divine Love which is called the Holy Ghost. 
God’s love, not man’s will, caused His birth.t Here 
already we find a divine activity within the process of 
time, which yet is other than the only-begotten Son. 
Disciples of the Incarnate Son, moreover, found within 
themselves a power which was so plainly that of the 
Incarnate Son that they called it the Spirit of Jesus; 

1 Cf. St. John i. 13. 


332 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


yet it is not personally identical with Jesus, for it 
points to Him and bears witness of Him. Moreover, 
it is a personal influence, more fitly called “‘He” than 
“Tt.” Here is a third activity of God; so we reach 
the Christian faith in three Persons who are one God. 

In the period of preparation the distinction could 
not be drawn. It is a common but intellectually dis- 
astrous error to identify the Yahweh of the Old Testa- 
ment with the First Person of the Christian Trinity. 
But, apart from all other modifications in men’s 
thought of God to which the Incarnation led, the 
Yahweh of the Old Testament is the undifferentiated 
unity of the Godhead, and in as much as He is God 
self-revealed. He comes far nearer to corresponding 
with the Second Person in the Christian Trinity than 
with the First.!_ But such discussions are very futile. 
It is only the full Christian revelation which brings 
the complete knowledge of God, so far as men can 
receive it. What is so revealed has, of course, always 
been true; it did not begin to be true at the beginning 
of our era. We can read back our fuller knowledge 
into the earlier religious history, but we must not 
identify the terms of our fuller (though still utterly 
inadequate) terminology with any particular terms 
of the less full and distinct apprehension possible to 
the ancients. 

The Holy Spirit, as made known to us in our ex- 
perience, is the power whereby the created universe— 
which the Father creates by the agency of the Son, 


1So Coleridge (Formula Fidei de Sanctissima Trinitate) speaks of 
the Second Person as “the supreme reason; the Jehovah; the Son; 
the Word. .. .” 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY 333 


His self-revealing Word—is brought into harmonious 
response to the love which originated it. The divine 
self-utterance is creative; within the thing so created 
the divine self-utterance speaks in Jesus Christ; the 
divine impetus which is in the created thing by virtue 
of its origin is thus released in full power to make the 
created thing correspond to the Creator’s purpose. 
Love creates; Love by self-sacrifice reveals itself to 
the created thing; Love thereby calls out from the 
created thing the Love which belongs to it as Love’s 
creature, so making it what Love created it to be. 

This already lets us form some faint conception of 
the Divine Love itself. But there is first another 
question the answer to which will help us further. We 
said that what the Incarnation revealed had always 
been true. But this requires modification. The whole 
gist of our argument is that we must be thorough- 
going in our insistence that God grasps the whole 
universe in an eternal comprehension, and equally 
thoroughgoing in our insistence that He is at work 
in the process of time really doing particular things, 
really suffering particular things.1 It is sometimes | 
said that the Incarnation and the experiences of Jesus 
Christ on earth cannot have made any difference to 
God. But this is only a half-truth. Eternally God 
is what He revealed Himself in Jesus Christ to be; 
therefore to say that He then became this would be 
false. But temporally God passed from creation to 
creation—from the creation of Light to the creation of 


1 The former conviction historically comes from Greece, the latter 
from Israel. Cf. Bishop Strong’s Religion, Philosophy, and History, 
specially pp. 42-48. 


334 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


worlds, of animals, of man; He passed from training 
Moses to training Isaiah; and continually He passes 
from experience to experience. This does not make 
Him different, but it does not leave Him unaffected. 
He is indignant at cruelty; He yearns over His way- 
ward children; He rejoices in their love. If this is not 
so, the Bible is merely false and the Gospel story no 
picture of God. If He is thus affected by temporal 
occurrences, this must be true especially of the In- 
carnation. 

God eternally is what we see in Christ; but tem- 
porally the Incarnation, the taking of Manhood into 
God, was a real enrichment of the Divine Life. God 
loved before; but love (at least as we know it) becomes 
fully real only in its activity, which is sacrifice. Tem- 
porally considered, we must say that the Love, which 
eternally God is in full perfection, attained its tem- 
poral climax when Christ died on the Cross; so that 
the Cross is, as Traherne called it, the ‘‘Center of 
Eternity.” ! The act of sacrifice enters into the very 
fiber of love and makes the love deeper and stronger; 
for love at its fulness is not a disposition, it is rather 
“‘the consciousness of survival in the act of self-sur- 
render.” * At that time God put forth His power; 
but also God therein fulfilled Himself. The Father is 
eternally perfect; the Son, sharing eternally the 
Father’s perfection, temporally fulfills Himself in the 
historic process, which is the temporal expression of 
God’s eternal being. Thus God is both. absolute and 


1 Meditations. First Century, § 55. 
2 Nettleship, Fragment on the Atonement. For this point cf. St. 
John xiii. 1 (R. V. margin). 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY — 335 


relative, both transcendent and immanent; as tran- 
scendent He is the eternal One, unchangeable because 
all change falls within His perfect Being: as immanent, 
He passes from glory to glory, from love to greater 
love—not changing in nature but more perfectly 
actualizing His nature, adapting His activity to 
changing conditions so as at all times to act in love 
and, so acting, to add to the love. 

At an earlier point ! the doubt was raised whether 
the grounds for recognizing a personal distinction in 
the Godhead between the Father and the Son did not 
apply also to the Incarnate Son, so that we must 
accept a Nestorian theory of a human Person subject 
to many limitations side by side with a divine Person, 
who takes the human Person somehow to Himself. 
If God the Son, the Word of God, is at once the sus- 
tainer of the universe and the Babe in the manger, 
does not this involve duality of Person in Him, on 
precisely the same grounds on which it was said that 
there must be more than One Person in the One God? ? 
No, not necessarily. The distinction within the God- 
head we take to be fundamentally that between the 
eternal perfection and the progressive realization 
which is its temporal aspect. But the Divine Word 
and Spirit we take to be essentially temporal and 
progressive energies, which are everlasting and are 
also eternal because, but only because, they are the 
(temporal) energies which both express and constitute 
the eternal perfection.* Between the experience of 


RCH pi 143. 2.Chaprro: 
3 What such philosophers as Bradley and Bosanquet call “the God 
of religion” does not closely correspond with anything in which I 


336 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


the Son subject to human limitations in Jesus of 
Nazareth and the Son as progressively ordering the 
world according to the Eternal Purpose of the Father 
there is not the same distinction as between the 
eternal and temporal modes of the divine. It is true, 
as has been said already, that we cannot expect to 
understand the Person of God Incarnate. We only 
plead that our theory places the difficulty where we 
ought to expect to find it. 

Thus temporally regarded God is known as Son 
and Spirit; as Son He achieves the perfect sacrifice; 
as Spirit He prompts and enables us to enter into it. 
God is thus our Leader in the way of life, and also our 
companion as we follow where He leads. Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit are Three Persons, for what we know 
of each is incompatible in one personal life with what 
we know of Others. Yet these incompatibles are per- 
sonal activities of an identity, which is perfect Love. 

There is, no doubt, a danger lest such a conception 
may lead men to fix all attention on the Son while 
they fail to lift up their minds to the Eternal Father. 
There is an easy attractiveness and a fatal delusion in 


was taught to believe, nor with anything in my own thought or 
experience; but it comes nearest to what the Second Person of the 
Trinity would be if the First did not exist. It has long seemed to me 
that the doctrine of the Trinity solves the problem which these writers 
propound to the religious consciousness as first insoluble. I ought to 
add that I am not aware of any former attempt to relate the doctrine 
of the Trinity to the problem of Time and Eternity as I have done. 
I therefore submit this suggestion with some diffidence, and with 
perfect readiness to withdraw it if it be found incompatible with the 
intellectual and spiritual positions which it seeks to harmonize and 
safeguard. 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY = 337 


a religion which worships an Invisible King who is 
at work in History, while giving a perfunctory ac- 
knowledgement to a Veiled Being who abides in a 
remote Eternity. But to adopt any such attitude 
would be false to all man’s deepest religious experi- 
ence, which is always that of communion with the 
Eternal; it would also be contrary to the whole course 
of the argument by which we have come to this 
conclusion, for that argument consists in the double 
contention that Eternity must be conceived as re- 
quiring the actual historic process as part of its own 
content, and that History can only be understood in 
the light of Eternity. The Son is Lord of History 
only because He is the self-manifestation of the 
Eternal. Only through Him have we access to the 
Father; to Him, therefore, our immediate loyalty is 
given; but He claims that loyalty precisely in order 
that He may present us with Himself to the Father, 
so that, just because of our loyalty to the Son, the 
Father is Himself the supreme object of our adoration 
and service. 

We have often used the word Love, but have 
attempted no definition. Nettleship’s phrase lately 
quoted is not a definition but rather a statement of 
one element in Love. But Love cannot be defined; it 
can only be named; and its Name is threefold—Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit. It abides constant in itself, and 
all its activities, while they are utterly essential to it, 
yet only express its constant nature; by its activities 
it calls itself forth even from where its presence Is un- 
suspected. We know this quite well in our dealings 
with one another. What we have now found is that 


338 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


if we would understand God in whose Being all the 
universe is grounded, we must conceive that Value, 
which is real whenever two finite spirits find them- 
selves in each other, raised to Infinity. 

God is Love; therefore He seeks Himself in an 
Other; this seeking is the eternal generation of the 
Son, who is Himself the Other that is sought; the 
Son as the Divine Self-utterance is the agent of crea- 
tion so that in Him all the universe is implicit; ? 
within the universe the Creator-Son lives a human 
Life and dies and rises again, so declaring to the 
universe the nature of its Creator; thus He calls forth 
from finite spirits the love which is theirs because He 
made them, though by self-will they had obscured it; 
so the creature becomes worthy of the Creator; and 
the same love which the Son reveals to men and elicits 
from them everlastingly unites the Son to the Father; 
this is the Holy Spirit. And this whole complex of 
related spirits is the Supreme Value or Reality—the 
Love Divine.? In God it begins, in Him it ends, and 
in Him moves whatever moves. His perfection is 
not coldly static; it is wrought out in struggle and 


1“The world is a hymn sung by the creative Logos to the glory 
of God the Father” (Inge, Outspoken Essay, second series, p. 20). 

2 Perhaps it is worth while to point out that for the full realization 
of all the Values comprised in Love, triplicity is indispensable; there 
must be the Lover, the Beloved, and the Friend who rejoices in their 
mutual love. In the full reality of perfect love, the three parts are 
interchangeable. Each is Lover; each is Beloved; each rejoices 
(as the friend of the bridegroom rejoices) in the other’s mutual love. 
It is not true, therefore, as is sometimes supposed, that in principle 
only two centers are needed for the perfection of Love. Perfect Love 
is in principle Tri-une. 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY 339 


agony and uttermost self-sacrifice. But neither is it 
precarious, for the historic process is the temporal 
form of an eternal perfection to which that process is 
essential. 

To say that we can understand this Supreme 
Reality would be false; and if our view seemed utterly 
complete that would condemn it. But we find what 
we have a right to hope for; we find that, though the 
Supreme Reality transcends our grasp, we are not 
ever merely baffled. As we move in thought from 
point to point, the mind is never checked by a sheer 
obstacle. In thinking of God as Christians have 
learned to believe in Him, the mind is always free; it 
is the finite before the Infinite, but its freedom proves 
its kinship. We are His children, and cannot fully 
understand Him; but He is our Father, and we know 
Him enough to love Him. As we love Him, we learn, 
for His sake and in His power, to love men. So loving, 
we become partakers of the Divine Nature, sharers 
in that divine activity whereby God is God. 

Thus nothing falls outside the circle of the Divine 
Love. The structure of Reality when regarded 
analytically is a statification wherein the lower strata 
facilitate the existence of the higher, but only find 
their fulfillment as those higher grades inform them. 
The structure of Reality when viewed synthetically 
is the articulate expression of Divine Love. God 
loves; God answers with love; and the love wherewith 
God loves and answers is God: Three Persons, One 
God. 

God is Love. But we miss the full wonder and 
glory of that supreme revelation if we let the term 


340 CHRIST THE TRUTH 


Love, as we naturally understand it, supply the whole 
meaning of the term God. There is a great danger 
lest we forget the Majesty of God, and so think of 
His Love as a mere amiability. We must first realize 
Him as exalted in unapproachable Holiness, so that 
our only fitting attitude before Him is one of abject 
self-abasement, if we are to feel the stupendous marvel 
of the Love which led Him, so high and lifted up, to 
take His place beside us in our insignificance and 
squalor that He might unite us with Himself. ‘‘When 
I consider Thy heavens, even the works of Thy fingers, 
the moon and the stars that Thou hast ordained— 
what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” It is 
a defective Christianity which has no use for the 
Dies Irae: 


Rex tremendae majestatis, 
Qui salvandos salvas gratis, 
Salva me, Fons pietatis. 


To omit the thought of God’s Majesty, and to rebel 
at language of self-abasement in His presence, is not 
only to cut at the historic and psychological root of 
all man’s religion, but it defeats its own object, for it 
belittles the Love which it seeks to enhance. If our 
first thought of God is that He always has a welcome 
for us, there is less thrill of wonder in that welcome 
than if we first remember His Eternity and Holiness, 
and then pass to the confident conviction, which 
remains a mystery commanding silent awe—‘‘Our 
fellowship is with the Father.” 

But no; it does not merely remain such a mystery; 
this is itself the climax of mystery, which we appre- 


LOVE DIVINE: BLESSED TRINITY 341 


hend (if at all) in an agony of joy and a rapture of fear. 
- For the joy is shot through with the sense of our 
unworthiness, the rapture intensifies the fear that is 
our response to overwhelming greatness. So it is 
only half the truth to say that we must worship the 
Transcendent that we may appreciate the Immanent. 
God is never so transcendent as when He is most 
immanent. It was in the consciousness that He came 
from God and went to God that our Lord performed 
the act of menial service. It was when He acknowl- 
edged His earthly Name that the very soldiers went 
backward and fell to the ground. Nor is there any 
more august and awe-inspiring symbol of the suprem- 
acy of the Most High than the sublime and dreadful 
solitude of the Figure on the Cross—a_ spiritual 
loneliness made more intense by the physical prox- 
imity of dying malefactors and mocking crowds, for 
whom in His agony He prayed. 

Christus Veritas: ‘This is the true God and eternal 
life.”’ 
























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